


No Satisfaction

by San Antonio Rose (ramblin_rosie)



Series: Wind of Change AU [3]
Category: Mission: Impossible (TV 1966), Supernatural
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cross-Posted on LiveJournal, Cults, Gen, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Mind Control, SPN AU Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29937327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramblin_rosie/pseuds/San%20Antonio%20Rose
Summary: When Jim gets word of a cult being built up as cover for extracting classified information from its unwary members, he calls Sam and Dean--only for them to discover that the chief source of the cult leader's power is Famine's ring. Yet even after the brothers, working with Barney and Willy, reveal a still darker layer to the secrets lurking beneath the cult's idyllic veneer, Jim insists on having Paris and Dana infiltrate and help bring the cult down from inside. It's one of those missions where Murphy's Law applies in spades, and as if Paris being a shapeshifter weren't hazard enough, things get complicated in a hurry when Dana develops a raging case of the baby bug. Can Sam and Dean get the ring back in time to save their team... and what will they do with the ring if they succeed?
Series: Wind of Change AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2199885
Comments: 2





	1. Ring a Ding Dillo

**Author's Note:**

> Picks up roughly a year and a half after "Magic Carpet Ride." Written for spnaubigbang, though it’s been in progress for a while now. Partially inspired by sharlot1926’s “Jai Guru Deva Om” (which is even creepier—I couldn’t bear to read the first half or so!). Many thanks to my ever-patient beta jennytork and my awesome artist matchboximpala, who decided to take a couple of risks that paid off handsomely!

  


After the IMF’s mission in Effingham, Illinois, in the fall of 1969 culminated in the bizarre death of Gunnar Herjulfsen and the complete crackup of Eric Schachtschneider, nee Erich von Waffenschmidt, Jim Phelps had had to come to grips with the fact that Sam and Dean Winchester’s beliefs might not be wholly irrational. He wasn’t ready to grant their views complete credence, but at minimum, they seemed to be magnets for the inexplicable. There was no way a human or a wild animal could have killed Herjulfsen, who had been alone in a cell in the Effingham jail at the time of his death—yet his body had been mangled and his heart stolen by something with some degree of intelligence. The Winchesters blamed the daevas Herjulfsen had supposedly been controlling; Jim... just didn’t know what to think.

Jim did have to credit Sam and Dean on one point, though. They knew their stuff. They could spot a fraud a mile away, and they knew how to safely orchestrate a fake haunting or other supernatural event if a superstitious criminal or spy needed to be broken. Once they even did the research needed to fake a summoning spell—one that wouldn’t accidentally summon something dangerous. Before long, anytime a mission briefing revealed that a target had even slight inclinations toward the occult, Jim automatically called in the Winchesters. Most of the time, they were the first to point out that nothing actually supernatural was happening.

Most of the time.

But once in a while....

* * *

Being the IMF’s walking two-volume set of _Encyclopedia Monsterica_ was getting boring, Dean reflected as yet another mission briefing rolled along in July of 1971. The mark this time, Carl Medlin, was a wannabe wizard with a degree in psychology and a mind control device, or so the Secretary thought. In December, Medlin had launched some kind of minor cult, the Order of the Black Horse, on twenty acres or so of a former plantation outside Baltimore, and it had since become apparent that he was using the cult to scam people into not only signing over all their worldly possessions but also coughing up classified information. Dean could see some women finding the guy attractive; he was blond, blue-eyed, medium height, kind of stocky. But somehow he would have looked more at home in a pinstripe suit and fedora than the ridiculous guru-esque oatmeal-colored linen suit his file picture showed him wearing.

Dean almost quit listening to Jim’s briefing as he started running through options for exposing that kind of idiot. It probably meant using Dana as bait—doe-eyed, freckle-faced Dana, who’d been with the team for almost a year but was still more 90-pound girl than _femme fatale_ in Dean’s eyes, even if she did have guts. Jo wouldn’t have gotten captured or kidnapped nearly as often as Dana had been in the last year, and no one could have mistaken Jo for sixteen when she was twenty-five. Not with a gun in her hand.

“Now,” said Jim, starting to circle the living room again as he handed out more pictures, “we believe the occult rituals Medlin is engaging in are a cover for his more mechanical mind control. We’re not certain whether he’s using a drug like B-230 or some kind of electronic device, but it seems that whatever it is, it’s connected to the ring he always wears.” And Jim handed the last photo, a close-up of said ring, to Dean to share with Sam.

The brothers looked and swore in unison. The ring was far too familiar—silver band, huge black stone.

“No,” Sam breathed. “No, no, it... it _can’t_ be....”

Jim paused. “Something wrong?”

Dean swallowed hard and looked up at him. “I... ’scuse me, Jim. I need to call Loki. Privately.”

Jim looked concerned, given that they hadn’t needed Gabriel on an IMF mission since Effingham, but nodded. “All right. You can use the upstairs phone.”

Dean nodded and headed up the stairs to Jim’s bedroom.

No sooner had he closed the door, however, than Gabriel appeared, looking grim. “Sorry, Deano. You’re not wrong. It is Famine’s ring.”

Dean swore quietly. “How the hell....”

“How do you think?”

“Crossroads deal?”

“Close. Once in a blue moon Famine decides to go into business for himself. Not sure how it worked in this case, whether the crossroads demon acted as the middleman or not. But the human gets the ring and its power for a set number of years, and when he dies—at any point up to and including the second the deal expires—Famine gets to eat his soul.”

Dean shuddered. “We can’t take this hunt. Sammy....”

Gabriel stepped closer. “Sam fought back. Yeah, he slipped under extreme pressure, but Sam not only made himself stop but also took down Famine himself. This ring isn’t like Death’s; even on Famine’s hand, its power is far more limited in intensity and scope right now, with Luci in the box. It’s more limited still when it’s worn by a human. You and Sam know how to cope when it’s at full strength. It’ll be easier this time.” He lowered his voice even further. “But what about the team? What about Paris, especially? You know what that thing does to humans—what would it do to a shifter? Not to mention Dana; she’s a giant question mark, from what I can tell.”

Dean paced away for a moment, not wanting to admit Gabriel had a point but unable to escape the question. Then he turned back to Gabriel. “So why can’t you do it? Keep all of us out of the line of fire.”

“Witness Protection, remember? Famine can’t know I’m involved. I’d be pushing it just taking the ring at the end and getting out.”

Dean sighed. “Okay, _supposing_ we stay in. The Secretary’s going to want the ring destroyed. Can we do that?”

“Sure. Fake ring is easy, and so is a bait-and-switch.”

“No, I mean... really destroy it.”

“Dean, if we do that and if, in spite of everything we’ve done, someone pops the lock on the Cage....”

Dean sighed again, more heavily. “Can you hide it, then? Like, hide it so it’s impossible to find in the next century or two?”

“It can’t stay hidden forever.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Now it was Gabriel’s turn to sigh. “I’ll do what I can, yeah. But I won’t be responsible if doing that throws history off course.”

“You mean more than it already is?”

“It won’t—it _can’t_ prevent some famines from happening. Most calamities don’t require a Horseman’s oversight. But there may be some that won’t go the same route if Famine is weakened even further than he already is.”

“Well, then, Atropos can figure out how to set it straight. All I’m worried about is keeping the Cage locked.”

Gabriel nodded slowly. “Okay, then. It’s a deal.”

“You comin’ in for the rest of the briefing?”

“Nah, you guys can handle it. I’ll be on call, though. Jim’s got my phone number, although he doesn’t know it yet.”

Dean nodded. “Gotcha. Thanks, dude.”

Gabriel nodded back and vanished. Dean took a deep breath, let it out again, and headed back to the others.

“What’d Loki say?” Sam asked as soon as Dean was visible from the living room.

“We’re right.”

Sam cursed quietly and buried his face in his hands. Paris squirmed a little, and Barney and Willy exchanged a concerned look. Jim and Dana, who were now sitting on opposite ends of the same couch, just looked confused.

“I... take it that’s bad?” Dana ventured.

“Worse,” Sam replied through his hands.

“It’s not at full strength,” Dean noted. “Loki thinks you’ll be okay.”

“You think I want to go anywhere near that thing? You think—”

“ _Sam_.”

Sam looked up, his eyes haunted and miserable, as Dean sat down. “I can’t forget it. I _can’t_.” And he shuddered.

Dean knew exactly what he meant. All the changes they’d made to the timeline, all the brain reboots that had followed, none had been able to erase all the mental scars of the Apocalypse. And Dean couldn’t forget that disastrous confrontation with Famine, either.

“I know, Sammy,” he said quietly. “I get it. I don’t want that, either. But dude, we have to. We’re, like, the only hunters alive who’ve got any experience with this.”

Sam managed not to curl in on himself completely, but mainly because a) they were in public and b) Dean put his arm around Sam’s shoulders.

Jim cleared his throat. “Would you mind explaining to the rest of us?”

Dean sighed. “You want the truth or something you’ll believe?”

“We need the truth. We can decide what to believe later.”

Dean glanced at Sam and nodded. “You’ve heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”

The other men sat up a little straighter.

“Which version?” Jim asked.

“War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death.”

“Yes, personifications of signs that will point to the end of the world.”

“Not personifications. They’re real beings. Death’s locked up in a box Downstairs—although honestly, I’m not sure why. I mean, he’s powerful, but he’s a neutral. Anyway, the other three are loose topside. But what the legends don’t say is that each Horseman has a ring of power.” Dean nodded toward the photo sitting on the coffee table in front of Sam. “That’s Famine’s.”

Willy leaned forward. “You mean Medlin is really Famine?”

“No, Famine’s an old dude on oxygen, rides around in a black car with a bunch of stunt demons, and he’s always complaining about how hungry he is. This guy’s human. But with Famine’s ring, he’s got a portion of Famine’s powers.”

“Which are?” Jim prompted.

“The ring intensifies the deepest craving of anyone who comes near it,” Sam answered. “Sometimes it’s for food, yeah, but it could be for sex, could... could be an addiction.” He shivered again.

Dean rubbed his shoulder. “Hey. We can ask Loki to put sigils up.”

Sam nodded jerkily.

Barney tilted his head a little. “So what you’re saying is, Medlin uses the ring to create intense cravings in his followers and then promises fulfillment if they give him what he wants.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Sam said. “And even... even if it’s not at full strength, like Loki said... most people can’t hold out. It’s like you’re starving, like you’ve been starving so long you’re half mad. You—you don’t think, you just....” He shivered so hard, the couch creaked.

Dean pulled him closer. “ _Sammy_. It won’t be that bad this time. Loki promised.”

“Dean....”

“Look, go call him, okay? Talk it over with him. But I’m tellin’ you, I don’t know that we’ve got a choice. I think we gotta take one for the team here.”

Sam frowned, looked at Paris, and looked back at Dean. Dean nodded, and Sam swore softly in resignation.

“Go call Loki.”

Sam nodded and dragged himself upstairs, looking much smaller than a 6'4" 31-year-old Sasquatch had any right to look. The others were silent as they watched him go.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Dana confessed once Sam was out of earshot.

Dean sighed. “Last time we went toe to toe with Famine himself. It was pretty brutal.”

Jim frowned. “How brutal?”

“Guy who’d been on the wagon for twenty years drank himself to death inside of two days. And that was probably the _least_ gruesome case.”

Alarmed, Barney and Willy looked at Paris, who only paled but showed no other sign of knowing exactly why anyone would be worried about him.

But Dean didn’t look away from Jim. “Look, Jim, I’ll give it to you straight. It won’t be that severe with a human wielding this thing, but it could still get bad. You guys could still find yourselves wantin’ to do stuff you never dreamed you’d want—stuff you’d never think about doing on a normal day, a normal mission. You may not be able to keep that desire at bay for the entire mission. In the wrong circumstances, you could cave, no matter how much you think you won’t. And it won’t just be food; hell, you guys have seen me eat, so you know what it means when I say I _lost my appetite_ when we were up against Famine. Like, completely, wasn’t hungry at all. And there’s no immunity to this thing, no way to protect yourself except to stay away.”

“What was your craving?” Paris asked quietly.

Dean paused. “Let’s just say it wasn’t something Famine could use against me.” That, in the end, was all that was relevant; he wasn’t about to admit that according to Famine, he was too dead inside to want anything.

Some days he still thought that was true. Some days he still wished like hell that it was. Life was better now, his mental health improving with every reboot, but... post-Apocalyptic stress disorder wasn’t something that just went away like a cold, even four years on.

Sam came back down while the others were still digesting what Dean had said. The abject misery in Sam’s eyes had lost its abjectness but wasn’t gone completely, yet Sam had his game face on and moved more confidently than he had on the way up to talk with Gabriel.

“You good now, Sam?” Dean asked as Sam sat down.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. Loki... did what he could.” Then he looked over at Jim. “Look, Jim, we’ll take this mission ourselves. You guys don’t have to come.”

“No, I’m afraid I do,” Jim replied. “You see, you two don’t have the clearance to check Medlin’s safe to determine what information stored there belongs to our government.”

“And you don’t believe us,” Dean noted.

Jim raised his hands. “I didn’t say that.”

“What he also isn’t saying,” Barney added, “is that you guys need backup.”

“And you’re getting it,” Willy agreed.

Sam looked back at Dean, who nodded once in approval. After Effingham—hell, even since that first mission that had gone so disastrously wrong in the Soviet satellite hellhole Dean wished he could forget as thoroughly as he’d forgotten its name—Barney and Willy were just about the only civilians the brothers knew they could trust with their lives on a hunt like this. Those two were good agents, sure, but they knew at least a fraction of the truth and believed it, and Barney had even stuck his toe into the waters of hunting far enough to understand it, although he was smart enough to stick to his usual lines of work and leave demons to the pros. They knew the truth about Paris, too, and were cool with it. Plus, both men were loyal to a fault. If they were determined to tag along on this hunt, there was no way the Winchesters could persuade them not to.

That wasn’t to say that the brothers didn’t trust Jim. He was a great guy, great agent, great strategist, one of the best when it came to IMF stuff; and after Effingham, he was more open-minded about the supernatural. He was just too much of a civilian, and Dean would have preferred not to have him involved. Still, if Jim was going to pull rank over clearance, he’d probably pull rank any other way he could, so there was no point in objecting.

So there was the core of the team they were stuck with. That left Dana and Paris to dissuade.

Yet before Dean could say a word, Jim turned to Dana. “Dana? What do you think?”

She shrugged. “I can’t think what Medlin could use against me. I don’t have any addictions that I know of. Maybe chocolate,” she added with a laugh.

“Dana,” Sam said gravely. “We saw a guy who’d gorged to death on Twinkies. We saw another man who’d boiled in hot oil because he was so desperate for French fries, he didn’t even wait for them to come out of the fryer.”

Her smile faltered. “B-but it’s not that bad this time, right?”

Dean looked at Jim. “How many of Medlin’s followers have died from overindulgence after breaking?”

“There have been a couple of heroin overdoses,” Jim admitted slowly.

Dana looked worried for a moment, but then her face hardened. “Well. I don’t do heroin. I’ll be okay.”

“Even if we have to use you as the bait?” Dean asked.

She nodded firmly. And before Dean could object, Jim nodded as well, closing the matter. Like it or not, Dana was coming with them.

“Paris?” Jim prompted then. “This won’t be like what happened in Vienna, but it’s still mind control. You think you can handle it this soon?”

Paris took a deep breath and let it out again. Dean had forgotten the reports about the team vacation back in October that had been derailed when Soviet agents caught and brainwashed Paris before he could meet up with the rest of the group—not that the brothers hadn’t been invited to join the others in Switzerland, but Dean still hated to fly. The precise nature of the abandonment issues the enemy shrink had uncovered in Paris’ mind had actually been left over from a past shift (probably the Rasputin-wannabe Vautrain, if Dean was any judge, or maybe the orphaned Stefan Zara), but the memory of his girlfriend’s murder had been real, and the shrink had tried to use it to program Paris to kill Jim. It had almost worked, too.

But that wasn’t the real issue here, and everyone but Jim and Dana knew it. The real question was whether Paris, as a son of the Alpha shifter, had enough control over his shifter nature to be able to keep its basest impulses in check for the duration of the mission.

“Would it help if I promise not to kill anyone?” Paris half-joked.

“Dude,” the Winchesters chorused.

“I know, I know. I... will likely need support from the rest of the team. But with that support, yes, I believe I will be able to fulfill my role in this mission.”

“What kind of support?” Jim asked in a tone that promised any kind of help Paris might need. “Space to talk?”

Paris nodded slowly. “To talk, yes, and possibly a space where you guys can put me under guard if necessary, at least until I can regain control of myself.”

Dana frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought you knew anything Medlin could use.”

“I know enough to endanger the mission,” Paris noted. “That in itself is reason for caution.”

“It is indeed,” Jim agreed. “But that’s true for all of us. So Paris, if you’re sure....”

Paris nodded. “As sure as I can be. Given the reason you called me for this one, you need me. And whether the ring really belongs to Famine or not, Medlin has to be stopped.”

And that was the kicker. Even if the ring were a fake, they were still left with a man who was blackmailing people into giving up state secrets. And that had to stop, both for national security and for the sake of the victims. People’s lives depended on their stopping him.

Hell, people’s lives were always depending on what the Winchesters did. That had gotten old the first time they’d encountered the Croatoan virus—hell, it had been old since the day Dad died. Not for the first or last time, Dean wondered why it was so important for _them_ to be the ones to fix everything, save everyone.

Jim nodded once. “All right. Since we’re all in, let’s continue.”

Dean knew neither he nor Sam could help the heavy sigh that they both gave at that pronouncement. He just hoped Jim wouldn’t hold it against them.


	2. Um Doodially Day

“This,” Dean said for the fifteenth time in ten days, “is a terrible plan.”

Barney looked like he wanted to tell Dean to stop worrying, as he had the first ten times, but while he knew Dean was right, he also knew there was no getting out of it now. Jim was adamant that Dana would be the one to go in first, followed by Paris for backup, precisely because they were the most vulnerable and therefore the most likely to get past Medlin’s defenses. If all went well, Jim’s idea was that they’d grab Medlin first and have Paris replace him long enough to have a “special revelation” and try to wind the cult down, similar to the way he’d “confessed” Vautrain’s tricks to the Grand Duchess.

And Dean knew that, too, just like he knew that they were taking every physical precaution possible. Doug, the on-again-off-again team doctor, had dosed both Dana and Paris with some concoction that would make them immune to any drugs Medlin might make them use over the next week—Dean had been too wiped out from driving for three days to ask for details. Jim had arranged for Medlin’s compound to be the target of a smash-and-grab, figuring correctly that Medlin would call someone to make arrangements for a better security system. Barney had tapped the phone to find out what security company Medlin called, and Paris had called the company back in Medlin’s voice to cancel the order so Barney could go in and sell a system of wireless cameras (with hidden microphones, though Medlin didn’t know that part) that would give the team both a way to case the place and a way to keep tabs on Paris and Dana. Barney, Willy, and the Winchesters were on their way to install the system and do their snooping now.

That didn’t keep Dean from voicing his reservations. And that wasn’t what kept Barney from contradicting him.

For the case had gone sideways from the smash-and-grab—not irreparably, but still noticeably. The former cat burglars the IMF had recruited for the break-in had been supposed to go in, take a handful of valuables, and get out. Instead, they found themselves unable to stop at just a few shiny things and had cleaned out anything of immediate monetary value. Only their skill had gotten them out before the police arrived. Once they were away from the place, of course, they’d found themselves baffled as to why they’d exceeded orders and promptly turned everything over to Jim, and the detective the IMF had had assigned to the case was able to concoct a plausible story to explain to Medlin how the cops had gotten the whole shebang back so fast (minus a handful of things that belonged to the government, which were written off as having been fenced). Then when Barney had gone to give Medlin his sales pitch, he’d come back disturbed and confessed that he’d had a real struggle to maintain his professional front when all he’d wanted to do was kill Medlin with his bare hands. That urge had vanished the second he’d left Medlin’s property.

The good news, if one could call it that, was that Medlin had agreed to schedule the installation at a time when he was away from the house, attending a party at which Jim had arranged for Medlin to meet Dana. His groupies would still be there and watching to make sure none of the installers made off with anything, but the ring would be gone, and that would make a big difference in how this part of the hunt would go. Still, no matter how often Dean—and sometimes Sam—advocated for a more direct approach, Jim was sure everyone would be able to handle the effects of the ring and wouldn’t be dissuaded from sticking to the plan.

Jim was kind of like Dad that way, Dean thought wryly.

So no, Barney didn’t tell Dean to quit worrying. Instead, he looked meaningfully at the fried pie that had come with Dean’s lunch and asked, “You gonna eat that?”

Dean answered by taking a huge bite out of it and letting out a surprised “Mm!” when it turned out to taste better than expected. He didn’t gobble the rest, but he did enjoy every bite—

—until it became obvious that Medlin’s car was passing the surveillance van because the taste of the last bite turned from cherry to ash in Dean’s mouth. He tried to suppress a disappointed groan and choked the bite down anyway. And he didn’t comment on how Sam’s knee started bouncing like it had a mind of its own for several seconds, until they were out of range of the ring.

Sam, on the other hand, took a deep breath and let it out again.

“You okay?” Dean asked.

Sam nodded and looked Dean in the eye. “Wasn’t bad.”

Dean wanted to protest that they’d been in range only a few seconds, but he could see that Sam wasn’t trying to bluff. It probably also helped that Gabriel had ensured that there weren’t and wouldn’t be any demons within a ten-mile radius, which was more than enough distance for Sam to get out of range and over his craving before he could do anything regrettable if the urge grew too strong. So instead, Dean just sighed. “Okay.”

At the compound, the agents were met in the foyer of the remodeled red-brick Greek Revival main house by two young women who were assigned to show them around. One was blonde and one was brunette, but they were both barefoot and dressed alike in a short-sleeved white linen tunic and pants that looked kind of like karate pajamas (which always called to mind a long-ago conversation with Sammy: “It’s called a _gi_ , Dean.” “A Gee, Dean? What kind of name for pajamas is that?” “Deeeean....”). Barney and Willy took charge of installing cameras in the main house, while Sam and Dean took the outlying buildings and the gardens. The brothers’ guide, Ada, the blonde, informed them on the way out the back door that Medlin wanted cameras at the entrance, exit, and sanctuary of each “house,” which was what she called the modern dorm-like buildings that seemed to be scattered around the property. Dean couldn’t help wondering morbidly whether any of them had originally been slave quarters, but he didn’t voice the thought to Ada.

“There are five primary houses,” she explained, “Earth, Leaf, Vine, Sheaf, and Star. Then there’s The Orchard, which is an offshoot of Earth House, and Fire House, which is for those whose suffering is preparing them for union with the Horseman. I’m afraid I’m not allowed to go in with you to anyplace but Star House, since that’s my house, but I’m sure you’ll know better than I will where the cameras need to go. Oh, and Carl said you need to be finished by 5. Tonight’s a feast night because we’ll be fasting for the next week; the retreat for the new initiates starts tomorrow, and Carl won’t be free to hear our confessions. Plus, we need to devote ourselves to meditation as much as we can to help the new initiates on their journey into the Order.”

“We can be done by 5, no problem,” Dean replied.

Sam frowned. “What’s the connection between fasting and not going to confession?”

Ada shrugged a little. “Well, our purpose here is to purify our souls by getting down to our most essential passion and pursuing it. But once we know what our passion is, we’re not supposed to pursue it all the time. We have to purge ourselves of other desires through confession first. Feasts are an exception, of course.”

“So how does that work, exactly?”

“Well, each house has meditation after supper every night, and once a week we fast until supper, and that night Carl leads us in deeper meditation and then hears our confessions privately. Once we’ve confessed, Carl lets us go claim a reward that suits our passion.”

Something clicked suddenly for Dean. “So everyone in the same house has the same passion?”

Ada nodded and smiled. “I don’t know how it works with other houses, but Star House—oh, it’s so wonderful. There’s a back door to the confessional that leads away from the sanctuary, and we get to go back through there to a private room with a friend and share affirmations for as long as we want. Sometimes we just sit and talk until dawn. It’s like time doesn’t matter. I can’t get enough; I just feel so _loved_. And the things Carl says before he lets me go....” She sighed and shut her eyes in bliss. “All I want to do is make Carl happy.”

So Star House was for approval junkies. That probably meant Sheaf House was for foodies and Vine was for alcoholics, and the reason for the name of Leaf House became apparent as they passed it and saw that the front door was decorated with a cannabis leaf.

“What do you do when you’re not meditating?” Sam asked.

“Oh, we all have work to do,” Ada replied, opening her eyes again. “That’s the thing about living in a community like this; we all have to serve each other so that everyone’s free to pursue their own passions in the proper way. Everyone who can helps with upkeep, and we help each other out as we can. Leaf House has confession the night before we do, for example, so we cook for them on our regular fast day, and Earth House cooks for us.”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait, you gotta cook for—”

“Jack,” Sam interrupted, using Dean’s cover identity.

“It was an adjustment,” Ada admitted. “But then I got to know some of the brothers and sisters over there. Some of them, you know, pitch in the day after just like everyone else. But some are the most amazing artists and poets and singers, and you should hear what comes out of their confession nights.”

“I bet it’s trippy,” Dean said dryly.

Ada ignored the remark. “And the prophets live there, too, there and Vine. Sometimes on feast nights they share with the rest of us. It’s so _deep_.”

Before Dean could make another snide remark, Sam asked, “So how does confession work? I mean, before you get your reward?”

“Carl takes us into the confessional one at a time. I think it’s sound-proofed, so no one else can hear what we say. Then we drink holy water and chant the confession mantra until we’re prepared, and then the confession just spills out of me.”

“And what kinds of things do you confess?”

Ada paused and laughed uncomfortably. “Well, I really couldn’t say. But I can tell you that when it’s over, I just... I really _feel_ purged.”

“And what about when you have nothing left to confess?”

“Oh, I’m not there yet. But normally if someone’s made his last confession, we have a feast the next night. And then... well, it depends on what Carl sees for them. Some stay here as house leaders, but the ones who are ready for union with the Horseman go up to the Temple.”

“The Temple? Where’s that?”

Ada pointed toward the back of the property. “Back that way, up the hill. The rest of us aren’t allowed up there, and the priests never come out to join us for feasts. I guess that’s part of the journey we’re not ready for yet. Anyway, when someone goes to the Temple, the rest of us fast and meditate to help him on his way, and then when Carl sees the smoke, we have another feast.”

Dean frowned. “Does anyone ever come back from the Temple?”

“No. There’s no need. No one goes there unless they’re ready to leave us and join the Horseman.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a disturbed look.

But at that point, they had reached the front door of Earth House, which was decorated with a yin-yang. The brothers made short work of installing the entrance camera while Dean spouted semi-accurate technobabble about how the cameras worked. Then with brief directions from Ada, they went inside, crossed the foyer, and pushed through the double doors into the sanctuary. The floor was covered with rows of mats rather than pews, and the only decorations in the place were the image of a rampant black stallion on the far wall, in the place where most churches normally hung a cross or crucifix, and a gong that stood underneath the horse. The symmetry of the space was broken only by the confessional, which stood out several feet from the left wall.

“Man, this place is creepin’ my cheese,” Dean muttered.

“Seriously,” Sam agreed. “If it weren’t for the ring, I’d say this is all classic cult stuff.”

“Are they _worshiping_ Famine?”

“That’s what it sounds like, though Medlin’s probably lying through his teeth about what the Horseman really is.”

“And we’re lookin’ at a hell of a lot more vics than I thought—like, what, a hundred? Two hundred?”

“Yeah, probably, something like that. And what the hell goes on at the Temple?”

“Guess we’ll find out when we get back there. Think you can handle the camera while I check out the confessional?”

Sam nodded. “Sure.”

Dean nodded back and handed over the equipment bag, and Sam headed toward the far right corner while Dean picked his way through the mats toward the confessional. The chamber in question, which was sheetrocked and painted white on the outside like the rest of the room, had two doors like a standard confessional. Dean had only ever been in the one in Pastor Jim’s church, and then only to play hide and seek, so he didn’t know what most were like. The penitent’s side of this one was indeed lined with soundproofing panels and had the back door Ada’d mentioned, along with a cushioned bench in front of the wall with the screen where Dean had to assume the penitent was supposed to kneel. There was a little sliding door with a short shelf next to the screen, and he guessed that was where the glass of holy water passed through.

The other side, though, was different. There was a bench there, too, and a shelf below the little door on which rested a juice glass. A jug of water sat within easy reach of the bench. But below the screen hung a tape recorder, and behind the entry door, where it couldn’t be seen from the doorway, was another shelf full of dropper bottles labeled _Pentothal Oral_.

Dean stuck his head back out the door. “Sammy, c’mere.”

While Sam stopped what he was doing and came over, Dean looked around the confessor’s space more carefully. The screen wall appeared to actually be a pocket door, and there were notches in the paneling on the back wall that would accommodate the glass shelf and the tape recorder when the door was slid aside. Dean located the handle and pulled the door a short way to test his theory.

“What’s up?” Sam asked, looking in the entry door.

Dean picked up a bottle from the shelf behind the door to show Sam. “This what I think it is?”

Sam read the label, and his eyes widened. “Yeah. Truth serum.”

“That explains the holy water.”

“Also why Ada can’t tell us anything about what happens—not that she’s not allowed, she’s just not able. And why Medlin keeps people here for months at a time; in a low dose, sodium pentothal starts to wear off in, like, ten minutes. I mean, some of the effects hang around for hours, but....”

“If he wants ’em aware enough to enjoy themselves afterward, the dose can’t be very high.” Dean put the bottle back exactly where it had been and slid the pocket door open a little further before closing it again. Then he pointed to the tape recorder. “Gonna have to grab all of these tapes, plus whatever’s in the office.”

“Right. But why does the wall slide?”

Puzzled on that score himself, Dean came out and went back into the penitent’s space. There was no sign on that side that the wall could move. Then he opened the back door—and was hit in the face with a wave of pungent evidence that Earth House had had its confession night pretty recently.

Sam let out a surprised cough. “O-kay! Guess we know why it’s _Earth_ House.”

“Down and dirty,” Dean agreed and shut the door again. “Must be why the wall slides, in case....”

“You’re gross.” Sam paused as Dean backed out of the confessional. “Wait, if people go from here to The Orchard—”

“Fruit of the womb.”

Sam rolled his eyes so hard, Dean suspected he’d given himself a headache.

“Dude, I didn’t name the place. But I wonder what happens if—y’know—”

“Fire House. It’s not a hospital; it’s a quarantine hut.”

“How the hell do you pursue _that_ passion in quarantine?”

“Maybe Medlin sets it up so only people who have the same infection hook up. Or maybe it’s just a question of keeping them out of the general population, and he doesn’t care who gets infected with what as long as he gets what he’s after.”

“Sounds more like a Pestilence gig,” Dean muttered and headed back toward where Sam had left the equipment bag.

Once the second camera was installed, the brothers went back out the front door to rejoin Ada. She led them around the right side of the building, which had windows and was evidently the residence wing, and to the back door there. The opposite side of the building had no windows, which Ada explained was to keep the reward rooms as private as possible.

“Y’know, Ada,” Sam said as he lifted the next camera into position for Dean, “and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but—these buildings look pretty Spartan. Why does Carl want cameras here?”

“Oh, for protection,” Ada replied. “You’re not wrong. We all take vows of poverty and obedience. Personal property is one of the hindrances we have to shed to pursue enlightenment, so there’s nothing here to steal. And normally this area’s pretty safe. We don’t even have a fence; trespassers don’t normally come much past the property line without either turning back or deciding to join us. But since the robbery, Carl’s worried that there might be more undesirable types moving in. We don’t want to have to put up a fence unless things get bad, but the security cameras should be a deterrent.”

“No personal property, huh?” Dean asked, starting to screw the bracket into place. “What if that’s your passion?”

“Those people wash out during initiation. Not every passion fits in with the rules of the Order.”

“So if there’s no fence, anyone could just walk off and leave whenever they want?”

“Oh, but we don’t want to leave. At least, not after initiation. Some people walk out before then, but Carl says that’s what the process is for, to weed out the people who don’t want to abide by the rules. The rest of us stay because... well, because we have everything we really need right here. And if our deepest desires are fulfilled this way, why, we have no reason to go back out _there_ where no one understands. Not like Carl does.”

Dean’s heart sank. Ada seemed like a nice girl, and he hated to see her building her whole world around such a horrible lie. Learning the truth was going to devastate her, and he was half tempted to try to spare her that agony.

“What did you do before?” Sam asked.

Ada shrugged. “I worked for Bella Abzug’s campaign, and then I was part of her staff in DC for a couple of months until I met Carl.”

Dean barely managed not to retch. If anyone personified the saying that politics is showbiz for the ugly, it was Congresswoman Abzug. He couldn’t blame Ada for bailing. But if she’d been a Congressional staffer, even for only a couple of months, there was no telling what kinds of classified information she’d had access to and was spilling to Medlin without realizing it. Dean couldn’t care about her feelings right now. They had to pull down this house of cards and stop Medlin. As traumatic as the reveal was going to be, the truth was the only thing that would set Ada free.

Sammy, bless him, changed the subject. “So I’m still kind of confused about this whole confession thing. I thought confession was supposed to be followed by penance before you could gain absolution.”

Ada laughed. “But penance implies there’s such a thing as sin. That’s not what confession is about here. We have to empty our hearts of other things so that they can be properly filled by our rewards. I mean, we have tests of obedience now and then, but we wouldn’t be here if we couldn’t pass them.”

Dean finished tightening the last screw and turned to her. “Wait, so—what, you guys don’t believe in punishment?”

Ada’s smile slipped a little. “Not... not as such. There, um, was a sister from Leaf House who lost her way a few months back and tried to go somewhere without permission. Carl took her up to a hut near the Temple and had one of the priests go minister to her. After that, she was in Fire House until she was ready to make her last confession.”

“Where’d she try to go?”

“Into the main house, I think. We’re not allowed up there after lights out.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look as they filled in the blanks at the same time. The woman must have hit the point in her addiction where one fix a week wasn’t cutting it anymore and tried to break into the main house to steal either another fix or enough money to buy her own. And Dean had a sneaking suspicion that if _ministry_ was a euphemism for the kind of tender loving care he’d gotten Downstairs, there was a very good reason why Medlin was the only priest who interacted with most of the cult members.

After that, installing the cameras in Sheaf, Leaf, Star, and Vine Houses went pretty fast. Sam and Dean switched off checking confessionals and found that they were all substantially similar but that the doors to the reward wings in Leaf and Vine automatically locked and didn’t have handles on the inside, presumably to keep people from wreaking havoc elsewhere while high or drunk. Fire House was next on the list, but when they got there, the front door was blocked by a middle-aged guy who had a very clear case of dementia and started shouting threats when Sam and Dean tried to approach. The brothers had a quick silent conversation and agreed to find spots to install cameras in the garden that would be a safe distance from the house but still give the team a decent view of the entrance and exit.

“Poor man,” Ada said quietly as she led the Winchesters away toward The Orchard, which was set in an actual small orchard of apple and cherry trees. “I don’t know what happened to him. I think he was okay when he got here, but he’s been like that for a couple of months.”

“So why is he still here,” Sam asked, “and not, I dunno, getting treatment somewhere?”

“Well, Carl says that when the body starts to break down, it’s just a sign that the soul is yearning for release. Fire House is a safe haven where people like that can rest until they can make their last confession and join the Horseman.”

“You’ve mentioned that several times. Who is the Horseman? Is he a god?”

Ada laughed. “Oh, no, not as such. The Rider of the Black Horse is the giver of passions. Union with the Horseman is just another stage in the journey. The Horseman bears us away on the final path toward union with the Divine, which I’m sure you know is the true goal of all who seek enlightenment.”

Dean _really_ wasn’t liking the picture he was getting of what really happened at the Temple.

Sam frowned. “So if union with the Horseman is your goal here, what’s with The Orchard?”

Ada’s smile brightened a little. “Well, some people’s passion is having children. Carl starts them in Earth House, but they move to The Orchard once that path is assured for them. And it’s not all mothers; some of the men really want to be fathers, too.”

“Is everyone else sworn to chastity or something?”

“No, only Sheaf House is. The rest of us don’t have the same passion as Earth House, but with feasts and confession nights—well, things happen,” Ada admitted, blushing a little. “I mean, affirmation doesn’t have to only be verbal. It can be physical.”

Dean decided it was time to be blunt. “So what happens if someone who’s not from Earth House gets pregnant?”

Ada shrugged. “We have a choice. For Star House, pursuing our passion and having kids aren’t mutually exclusive, and The Orchard is set up to give good prenatal care. It’s harder for Leaf and Vine, but sometimes passions change. If not... well, I think the Horseman knows and carries the baby toward the Divine early on.”

Sam cut off the angry remark Dean was formulating. “But what about you? What would you choose?”

Ada shrugged again. “Whatever Carl wants me to choose. I told you, all I want is to make him happy.”

“Even if it means losing your child?!”

“Carl knows best.”

“And if he told you to get pregnant in the first place?”

“I took a vow of obedience. I’ll do _anything_ for Carl.”

Dean didn’t say anything as they installed the entrance camera at The Orchard and waited until they were inside the sanctuary to curse a blue streak.

“They’re gonna start having _kids_ ,” Sam agreed, running a hand through his hair in dismay. “They’re gonna raise _kids_ in this—dude, people think _we_ had a messed-up childhood?!”

“Sammy, this ends. This ends _now_ , while those moms can still get some help before their kids are born.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m not arguin’. And poor Ada. Can you imagine what kind of shape she’ll be in?”

“We’ll get her out alive,” Dean declared as he headed toward the far right corner to start installing the camera. “She lives, she can find a way to get over it. But I’m sure as hell not letting her walk up that hill to the Temple.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Think I can guess what Medlin’s hunger is, though.”

“What?”

“Power.”

Dean nodded slowly and got to work to keep himself from saying exactly what he thought about Medlin. Sam was probably thinking the same thing anyway.

By the time they’d finished placing the cameras in and around The Orchard, Barney and Willy had finished with the main house and caught up with them. Since Ada had already given Sam and Dean general directions about the gardens, the women left to begin feast preparations. That gave the agents freedom to install the remaining outdoor cameras and share their infuriating discoveries about the cult without needing to remain polite in front of the women. Barney and Willy had gotten most of the same information from their guide, Denise, although they hadn’t heard about the goings-on in Fire House, The Orchard, and the Temple. But Denise had shared enough about one of Medlin’s most frequent visitors for Barney to have identified him as Medlin’s contact, a known agent of the European People’s Republic by the name of Victor Chrenko. Willy had also observed a large number of crystals and odd sigils in the décor of the house and gardens, which Sam surmised were probably intended to amplify the ring’s power so that it covered the whole property. Dean thought one of them kind of looked like the sigil Alastair had used to trap Reapers, but he couldn’t be sure.

It was getting close to 5 when the four men finally made their way up the hill toward the Temple. They had just passed the ‘ministry’ hut Ada had mentioned when they were stopped in their tracks by two smells the Winchesters unfortunately knew all too well: the stench of death and the tang of burned human remains. A quick look around revealed that whereas the other houses had each had a dumpster and a compost pile by the back door, the refuse from the Temple was left about fifty yards downhill from the windowless fake-Greek building. The compost pile seemed to contain a lot of ash, and a narrow trail led from it up to a brick structure beside the Temple that looked almost like an oversized pizza oven.

“Oh, they are,” Dean groaned, his suspicions finally confirmed. “They’re sacrificing the vics to Famine and burning the evidence.”

“Good gravy, Marie,” was all Barney could say.

Before the conversation could continue, however, the door of the Temple opened, and out stepped a scowling priest who gave off the strongest serial killer vibe Dean had felt from a human since that mostly-forgotten run-in with the Benders. Unlike everyone else they’d seen around the compound, this guy’s pajamas were blood red, and Dean didn’t want to find out whether they’d started out that way.

“Get out of here,” the priest growled.

Barney took a step forward. “Mr. Medlin sent us to—”

“I know why you’re here. Carl doesn’t want cameras in this area. Our rituals are sacred. Outsiders are not permitted to observe them.”

Willy put a hand on Barney’s shoulder. “Mac, it’s getting late. We’re supposed to be out of here by 5.”

“Guess you’re right, Joe,” Barney replied and nodded once to the priest, who didn’t move. And with that, the agents turned and headed back down the hill, though Dean could feel the priest staring after them until the path turned and the plants mercifully cut them off from the priest’s line of sight.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Willy said quietly as they made their way back toward the main house. “Jim said there’d been only a couple of overdoses.”

“Those were probably vics who still had someone on the outside looking for them,” Sam noted. “Whether it was true or not, Medlin would have had to tell the police something. Otherwise, it’s like—” He cut himself off before he could make the “Hotel California” reference that was still six years ahead of its time.

Instead, Dean supplied, “Somebody smarter than me once said that people don’t just disappear. Other people just stop lookin’ for ’em.”

Sam looked startled, as if he didn’t expect Dean to have remembered that conversation from way back at Lake Manitoc. Truth be told, that line was about all Dean could still remember after everything they’d been through, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

Barney’s eyes hardened. “Well, someone’s looking for them now.”

“Right,” said Willy at the same time the brothers chorused, “Damn straight.”


	3. Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

Meanwhile, at a big house near Fort Meade, Dana and Jim had gone their separate ways to socialize at the party they were attending, and Dana was schmoozing with the practiced ease of an up-and-coming consultant and Bright Young Thing, which was her cover identity for this mission. There was no danger of anyone but Jim who knew her being there, so she threw herself into the part and tried to keep track mentally of anyone who might be easy prey for a man like Medlin.

After an hour or so, though, she suddenly found herself feeling surprisingly lonely. She kept up her act while she finished the insincere conversation she was having with some businessman from Albany, but when he moved on to talk to someone else, Dana drifted over to the windows looking out onto the back lawn and the river beyond and sighed. Living a lie like this could be incredibly isolating. She found herself wondering whether continuing to be an agent was worth it, whether she’d ever have the freedom to have a deep, meaningful conversation with anyone ever again.

“Well, hello, beautiful.”

Startled out of her introspection, Dana turned to see Medlin standing beside her and favoring her with a dazzling smile. He was wearing an Eastern-looking suit, dark with a jacket that had a long tail and a Nehru collar, but as odd as it looked on someone of such obvious European heritage, the effect in person was striking. She hadn’t thought he was particularly attractive in the picture Jim had shown them, but pictures couldn’t capture his charisma. She couldn’t help gasping. “Hi!”

His smile turned apologetic. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, that’s okay. I just didn’t hear you walk up.” She offered him her hand. “Stacy Rogers.”

“ _Enchante_.” He took her hand and kissed it gallantly. “Carl Medlin.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Medlin.”

“Oh, please, Stacy, call me Carl.”

“All right, then. Carl.”

“Now where have you been all my life?”

It was one of the oldest lines in the world, yet Dana found herself blushing and giggling. “DC, mostly. I’m a consultant, but I’m kind of between jobs at the moment.”

“Oh, really? What kind of consulting do you do?”

“I’m a systems analyst.”

“Wow, beauty and brains. I sure would like to get to know you better, Stacy.”

“Well, I’m single, if that’s what you mean.” Wait, why did she say that?

“See, the thing is, I’m a priest.”

She felt her face fall in confusion. “Oh. But—I thought—”

“Hey, take it easy, Jackrabbit. Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m not that kind of priest.”

“Oh!”

“No, it’s a new deal, the Order of the Black Horse. Ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“It’s co-educational, not really part of any organized religion, open to anyone, but we do have a few rules that even I have to play by. And the snag is that I can’t date anybody who’s not a member of the Order.”

“Oh.” Why should she feel disappointed about that? It was a perfect excuse to get inside.

“Buuut we are starting our next initiation retreat tomorrow, and there are still some spaces open. I know it’s short notice, but you’d sure be welcome to join us.”

“W-ell, I... I don’t know... I’m not really religious, and... well, I’d need more information....”

“Tell you what. Tonight’s a feast night. Why don’t you come out to the Convent, have dinner with us, have a look around, see what you think? Then if you want to sit in on the initiation, I’ll save you a seat.”

She nodded and brightened. “All right. Sure, that sounds great.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card with contact information and directions to the compound. “We’ll be starting the meal around 8, so if you want to get there around 7, 7:30, that’ll give us some time to talk beforehand.”

“All right. How should I dress? Black tie, white tie?”

“Nah, we’re not formal. What you’ve got on would be fine. Clothes aren’t important; it’s what’s in here”—he tapped his chest—“that counts.”

She couldn’t help thinking suddenly that the Secretary might be wrong. “Okay, then. I’ll see you around 7, I guess.”

“See you then, gorgeous.” He winked at her and moved away.

She looked back out the window, put a hand to her flaming cheek, and wondered why she was grinning like a sap.

* * *

For his part, Jim had wandered outside onto the terrace and was just finishing a conversation about the stock market when he sensed danger. He turned and caught sight of Dana standing near a window and talking with Medlin. The man looked like a thug, trying to loom over Dana even though he was an inch shorter—yet Dana was blushing and laughing like a schoolgirl, and she clearly wasn’t acting.

Jim wanted to rip Medlin’s throat out.

Before he could barge into the house and warn Medlin away from Dana, however, he ran smack into someone shorter. He pulled back with an apology and was surprised to see that the man he’d run into was... Loki.

“Something wrong, buddy?” Loki asked with one eyebrow raised.

“No, no, sorry, just—you look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Don’t think we’ve actually met. Lex Arness.”

“Alan Walters.”

Loki shook Jim’s hand and subtly turned him away from the house. “Lucky I ran into you, Alan. I’ve heard some good things about you and have a project I was wondering if you’d help me with. Let’s walk.” And as Loki continued to steer him away from the house and the rest of the crowd, Jim felt almost like some sort of wall or shield had gone up between him and Medlin, easing his anxiety for Dana.

“I... suppose I’d be open to collaboration,” Jim allowed. “Who do you work for?”

Loki shot him a sidelong look. “Myself. You?”

Jim launched into a well-rehearsed spiel about his cover identity and credentials, which gave them time to get around a corner and to a part of the terrace that wasn’t as crowded as the rest. It was also further from Medlin, which helped, but when Loki led him up to a railing, he couldn’t help bracing himself against it as he wrestled to get control of his emotions again.

“Take it easy, Jim,” Loki said quietly. “Remember, you picked Dana because she’s vulnerable. Don’t blow your own plan now.”

“I can’t stand it, Loki. He’s _evil_.”

“Do I look like I’m arguing?”

Jim gripped the railing so hard, his knuckles turned white.

“Hey.” Jim could have sworn something draped over his shoulders like an arm or a cloak, but Loki wasn’t touching him. “Trust your team. They’ll get Dana out in one piece.”

Jim sighed. “You know, the IMF doesn’t have a file on you.”

“Like I said, I’m a freelancer. I don’t work for governments; I work for justice.”

“Like killing demons with Sam and Dean?”

Loki looked him in the eye. “Look at it this way. You’re used to dealing with cases that can’t be handled by conventional law enforcement. Say you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a certain man intends to kill everyone you love. You’ve got hard evidence, even a clear-cut confession, but it wouldn’t hold up in court. And even if the law believed you, the second you go to them, he’ll disappear and you won’t be able to find him again until it’s too late. If you could get him backed against a wall, wouldn’t you shoot?” When Jim didn’t answer, Loki continued, “I don’t care if you don’t believe in demons. What I helped Sam and Dean do saved the lives of their family, along with hundreds of other families who would be targeted by this thing—murder, arson, worse.”

“How do you know?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, but something in Loki’s eyes was older and stronger than his face. Jim looked away first and sighed. “I suppose I have no choice but to trust you.”

“Not that you could do anything about it if I did betray you... but I won’t. You’re on the right side here.” The cloak-like feeling over Jim’s back shifted, almost like a friendly squeeze, and disappeared. “Medlin’s leaving. You can go talk to Dana now. And Jim, just a friendly word of advice: rethink your definition of a happy ending on this one. Sometimes getting out alive is enough.”

Jim turned and shot a worried look toward the house. Loki snapped his fingers—and when Jim turned back, Loki was gone and Jim suddenly had a glass of sweet tea in his hand.

Sipping the tea and finding the sugar and caffeine more helpful than he’d expected, Jim made his way back into the house and found Dana. She seemed to be back to her usual self and smiled at him as he approached.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Great. I’ve got an invitation to dinner at the compound this evening and a provisional invitation to the initiation sessions that start tomorrow. Shouldn’t be too hard to get an invitation for Paris, too.”

“Good. You all right?”

She blinked. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

“I caught a glimpse of you talking to him.”

She laughed. “He came on strong, but I’m not falling for him, if that’s what you mean.”

“That is what I mean. Be careful of him, Dana. He’s a master of manipulation.”

“Jim, you don’t have to treat me like I’m twelve. I can handle it.”

Jim suddenly had grave doubts about that, but he didn’t voice them. “All right. Let’s go see what the others have found out.”

* * *

By the time Jim and Dana got to the area near the compound, Willy had parked the surveillance truck on a side road that ran past one side of the property, a hundred yards or so from where the gardens changed from looking well maintained to somewhat overgrown. Paris was watching Barney and Dean finish drawing a map of the property, and Willy and Sam were plugging in the last connections from the camera receivers to the monitor console. Barney quickly briefed Jim, Paris, and Dana on their findings and ran through the layout of the main house, the communal houses, and the Temple.

The thought that there must be some mistake, that maybe Medlin didn’t know what the priests were doing at the Temple or maybe Dean had misunderstood, niggled at the back of Dana’s mind. She squashed it firmly. _Someone_ in the Order was selling classified information, and they needed to find out who and stop it.

At Jim’s suggestion, Dana drove around the area, giving herself pep talks and running through her cover story until time to go to the compound. She arrived around 7:15 and was met at the door by a blonde woman about her own age.

“Hi!” said the woman. “You must be Stacy. I’m Ada.”

Dana smiled. “Hi, Ada, nice to meet you.”

Ada lit up for a moment before ushering Dana inside. “Carl sends his regrets, but he had to take care of a couple of emergencies when he got back, which means he’s running late in preparing for the feast, so he won’t be able to chat with you until afterward. But I’d be happy to show you around if you’d like.”

“I would like that. Thank you.”

“He says you’re thinking about joining the Order?”

“Well, I only just heard about it today, but I’d like to learn more. Do you like it here?”

“Oh, it’s the most wonderful, most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m with people who really understand me, who can feed my _soul_ and not just use me for what I can do. And I can give that sense to others, too, and that’s... it’s just so empowering. I’m really free to be myself here. I love it.”

“Not sure how I feel about living by a whole bunch of rules.”

“But the rules are only there as guides, like guardrails. They keep us focused on what we’re meant to be doing and how. If you don’t follow them, you lose your way, and your path becomes much harder. But if you do follow them, then... well, you don’t have to worry or fear anything. You can trust that your needs will be met, and they will be. And you can trust that others will do right by you, and they will. It’s peace and freedom and joy.”

Part of Dana was sad to see Ada trusting in a lie. Part of her was jealous that she didn’t have that freedom herself. So instead she turned to look around the foyer they were standing in. “Beautiful house!”

“Isn’t it? Carl lives here, and there are guest rooms for when we have visitors or if people need special counseling from Carl for some reason. And this is where the initiates stay until they’re ready to make their first confession, take their vows, and join a house. Wealth has no value, of course, but it’s nice for people to be comfortable until they’re ready for the transition.”

“Transition to what?”

“To pursuing only their deepest passion. That’s what we do here. Wealth is a distraction, but most people don’t realize that until Carl helps them discern what their true passion is and shows them how to let go of everything else.”

Torn between finding the idea repulsive and attractive, Dana let Ada show her around the main house, and Ada confirmed some of what Barney had said but in much more positive terms. Then she took Dana outside to a courtyard full of tables and people and introduced her to several members of her own house and a few friends from other houses. Delicious smells were drifting from somewhere close by, and given the chatter around her, everyone was expecting to have a great time.

They were interrupted by a gong, and Dana looked up to see Carl, resplendent in a red and black Oriental robe that almost seemed to glow in the light of the setting sun, standing on the terrace and holding his arms spread wide. “Children of the Black Horse!” he cried. “This is a time of festival! Raise your voices to the Divine!”

He struck the gong again, and all of the cult members began chanting in something that sounded like Hindi but probably wasn’t. Dana couldn’t understand it, but there was no mistaking the excitement on everyone’s faces.

After a minute or so, Carl struck the gong again, and the chanting ceased. “My children, the Horseman has been among us this evening. He has chosen two brothers and two sisters from Fire House to go to the Temple at once and continue their journey toward the Divine. Let us give thanks that they were considered worthy for release from their suffering!” And the gong sounded again.

Another, equally unintelligible chant started up. Dana tried not to squirm, given what Dean had said about the Temple and how profanely he’d said it, but everyone else seemed to think it was a genuinely joyful event.

Another gong. “Yet as some take leave of us today, others shall journey hither tomorrow. Even tonight, a new friend joins us, a friend who may soon be a new sister. Let us welcome Miss Stacy Rogers!”

“Hi, Stacy!” everyone chorused cheerfully, and Dana smiled and waved.

“And not every step in the journey, my children, need lead away from us. Tanya and Aiden, Children of the Earth, step forward.”

A young couple stepped away from the tables and toward the terrace, then turned so that everyone could see them.

“One purpose of earth, as you know, is to be tilled, to receive seed, and to bring forth good fruit. These children have been diligent in pursuit of that purpose. As they desired, Aiden’s seed has struck root in Tanya’s earth!”

Everyone cheered, and Dana felt a twinge of jealousy.

“Tanya and Aiden, from this night, you are Children of The Orchard. Go now and be blessed in the continued pursuit of your desire!”

As yet another chant started up, Aiden kissed Tanya deeply, and they ran hand in hand to a different table surrounded by beaming mothers- and fathers-to-be, who showered them with handshakes and hugs and kisses on the cheek.

Carl struck the gong again. “Children of the Black Horse, the fullness of the feast awaits within your own houses. Yet before we turn each to our own desires, let us break bread together, that we may be sustained as we approach the night.”

Everyone sat down then, apart from the people who were serving, and Carl came down from the terrace to speak to each table while the servers began to make their rounds. When Dana’s plate arrived, however, she was surprised to find that it contained only a small piece of grilled fish, a few spears of asparagus, and one piece of buttered bread. But no one else seemed to notice how light the meal was; in fact, most people were busy chattering and ate almost automatically, as if the food were only an afterthought.

“Well, Stacy,” Carl said as he sat down beside her. “Enjoying the show?”

“Seems to be a tight-knit group,” she confessed, trying to hide the way her heart was fluttering.

“Yeah, we’re one big happy family.”

“Not exactly my definition of a feast, though.”

“Ah, this is just the first course, Jackrabbit. They’ll get what they really want pretty soon—and, uh, you and I can go back to the house for a real meal.”

She blushed, and he grinned.

* * *

“Dammit,” Dean said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe she’s falling for this.”

“Emotions are treacherous at the best of times,” Paris noted. “I think we’ve all developed feelings for someone at an... inopportune moment.”

Sam kept his eyes on the screen and willed himself not to think about Ruby.

“The ring can’t be helping matters, either,” Willy noted, pointing to the area of distortion that obscured the view of Medlin’s hand. Sam couldn’t tell exactly what conclusions the soft-spoken strongman had reached about the situation, but Willy was no dummy.

Jim tilted his head to look at the distortion more carefully. “Is that a reflection, or is something wrong with the camera?”

Barney hesitated before answering. “Well, if it keeps up, there’s our excuse to go back in.”

Jim was just about to agree when a vehicle slowed to a stop outside the van. Dean, who was closest to the van’s back door, looked out and swore.

“What?” everyone else asked.

Dean turned back. “Sam.” He jerked his head toward the door.

Sam got up and looked out at the white truck parked on the other side of the road with two occupants—and Kansas plates. A curse slipped out. “Is that—”

“Yeah. ’Scuse us, Jim.”

And before Jim could formulate a response, the brothers were out the door and sprinting toward the truck. “Hey!” Sam barked as soon as they were close enough that he wouldn’t have to shout and risk being heard by anyone in the compound. “Federal agents! You can’t park here!”

The balding, middle-aged man getting out of the truck—their grandfather, Samuel Campbell—scoffed. “Sure. You’re federal agents, dressed like that?”

“ _Yes_ , we’re federal agents,” Dean snarled. “Yes, we are also hunters, but we work with the Feds, and you’re about to intrude on an official investigation.”

Samuel scoffed again. “Son, I’ve got a report of a skinwalker out here.”

“Campbell, you don’t know the half of it. The head of that cult has Famine’s ring, as in one of the Four Horsemen. You trying to tell me you want your daughter anywhere _close_ to that?”

Sure enough, Mom—younger than Sam had ever seen her—slipped out the passenger door and stood next to the truck. Sam instinctively moved closer, as if he could shield her from the ring’s effects by his sheer size. So far, the ring didn’t seem to be reaching past the property line, even with all the amplifiers in the gardens, but... well, this was _Mom_. And there was no telling what would happen if Medlin started to wield the ring actively to spur on the “feasting.” He hadn’t yet, from what Sam could tell, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

After listening to Dean and Samuel continue to growl at each other for a moment, she looked up at him and studied him briefly. “You’re the guys who wrote to me about John two years ago, aren’t you?” she asked quietly. “I mean, we’ve never met, but it’s like you knew us on sight.”

He nodded. “Yeah. We did. And we... did.”

“Look, John gets out of the Marines in a couple of years. And I’m _going_ to marry him if he asks.”

“We never said you shouldn’t. We’re doing everything we can to make sure it’s safe. Just—Mary, please, promise me, whatever happens, no deals. Not with demons, not with angels, no matter whose life is at stake. Deals, they... they just... never end well.”

Looking uncertain, Mom glanced back at the other side of the truck just as Dean rumbled, “Now, you listen to me. This is _our_ hunt. You can gank that skinwalker after we’re done; we won’t have time to deal with him. We’ll even give you what we know. It’s one of the priests, Anderson, but you can’t get close to him now. He’s in the Temple with the nastiest bunch of humans you’ve seen this side of Buchenwald.” Samuel blanched, but Dean kept going. “Your first responsibility is to your family. So you take your daughter, and you go down to DC and do some sightseeing and keep her the hell away from Carl Medlin and the priests of the Black Horse. We’ve already got two hundred people to save. We’re not gonna let you make it two hundred and one.”

“How did you know I helped liberate Buchenwald?” Samuel asked so quietly Sam could barely hear him.

Dean smirked. “Hunter. Fed. Take your choice.”

The look on Samuel’s face as he looked over at Mom was unlike any Sam remembered seeing the patriarch wearing after his ill-fated resurrection. Samuel hadn’t yet become the man who’d sell his own grandsons to the King of Hell. There was no question that he _did_ love Mom and want her safe, and for all the horrors he’d faced as a hunter, Buchenwald was clearly the worst memory of his life—and for good reason. At least monsters had a reason for being evil.

Then Samuel sighed and looked back at Dean. “There’s another hunt I could take in Ilchester—”

“ _No_ ,” both brothers said at the same time without thinking about how to explain why, even with all the changes they’d made, they couldn’t be sure something wouldn’t try to use the Campbells to get into St. Mary’s Convent and contact Lucifer.

But they didn’t have to cover. “Dad,” Mom spoke up, “isn’t Charlie at Annapolis? We could go see him.”

Samuel looked skeptical. “You think that’s close enough to keep tabs on the news?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Dude, if you take Mary to the Naval Academy, I will personally call you when the coast is clear.”

Samuel sighed again. “No, no, you don’t need to do that. We’ll go.”

“There’s a chance this’ll make a bigger splash in the news than you think,” Sam noted. “There’s some pretty nasty stuff going on here.”

Samuel nodded slowly. “All right.” He paused. “Thank you. Mary, let’s go.”

“I promise,” Mom whispered to Sam and slipped back into the truck.

As Mom and Samuel drove off, Dean ran a hand over his mouth and shook his head. “What the hell was he thinkin’?”

“I don’t think he knew about what’s really going on,” Sam replied.

“I mean, if Mom—” Dean broke off, not wanting to finish the thought.

“It kinda sounds like she’s already marked for Dad, so I don’t know if anything would have happened. But at least this way we know for sure she’s out of danger.”

Dean nodded slowly.

* * *

As the sun went down, the servers finished clearing away the last of the plates and set a small goblet of wine in front of everyone but Dana and Carl. When they’d finished, Carl stood and turned to the maternity tables. “Children of The Orchard, the bearing of fruit is both work enough and reward enough in itself. Go now and take your ease.”

That group got up and left, and the servers, who were apparently from Sheaf House and hadn’t eaten yet, came and sat down in the vacated places.

“Children of the Black Horse, drink now the festival cup and let your minds be opened to the Divine.”

Everyone who had a goblet drained it in unison and began yet another chant as Carl jogged up to the terrace. Dana watched in concern as those around her grew glassy-eyed and started to sway a little, and the tone of the chant grew more and more hypnotic. Carl eventually rang the gong to stop the chant, but a woman at one of the other tables kept going for a couple more repetitions and then started improvising some warbling melody that sounded vaguely like something one would hear in the Middle East. Dana couldn’t understand a word of it, but the others gasped and murmured happily as if they knew what the woman was singing.

When the song finally stopped, Carl held his hands out over the crowd. “Children of the Black Horse, have you opened your minds to the Divine?”

“We have,” came the droned reply.

“Receive now the awakening of your desire!”

And a burst of power that even Dana could feel washed over the assembly. Gasps and groans rose all around her, and she felt something stir in her that she couldn’t quite name.

After a moment, Carl dismissed the various houses one at a time, then came back down and ushered Dana back up to the main house, where a much larger turkey dinner was waiting for the two of them in the formal dining hall.

“I thought you couldn’t date outsiders,” she noted as she sat down.

“Oh, but this isn’t a date,” he replied with a devious smile. “It’s a recruitment dinner.”

She giggled, and he grinned and filled her plate. She ate gratefully and listened as he told her how he’d come to the idea of establishing a religion that encouraged the pursuit of passion rather than discouraging it, how he’d received visions from the Horseman with instructions on how to structure the Order, and how he’d lucked out in finding such a beautiful estate that needed some renovation but would serve the Order’s needs. Even though she wasn’t convinced any of the religious part was real, she found it harder and harder to consider him a dangerous liar. Something about him was just irresistibly attractive.

They went for a starlit stroll through the gardens after dinner, ending up sitting on a bench and listening to the crickets. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she let herself relax against him and lean her head on his shoulder. Delicious smells were still drifting from what she now realized was Sheaf House. People in Vine House were singing. Now and then, she could hear screams of ecstasy from Earth House. Part of her ached to stay here and enjoy it all... even though she wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

“So what do you think?” he asked. “Think you could like it here?”

“I do,” she sighed. “It’s peaceful, and everyone seems really happy, really nice.”

“They’d love to have you join us. So would I.”

“I like you, too.”

“So will I see you tomorrow?”

“Sure.” She paused long enough to remember her true purpose in accepting. “Say, do you mind if I bring a friend of mine? His name’s Tony Edgerton.”

“Boyfriend?”

She laughed, genuinely surprised. “No! No, no, nothing like that. Just a colleague, but he’s been through some hard times lately. I think he might like it here.”

He smiled, and something twisted in her gut. “The more, the merrier, Princess. Just don’t forget who invited you.”

“I won’t,” she breathed.

They looked at each other for a moment, and she thought briefly that he was going to kiss her. But instead he said, “C’mon. I’ll walk you out.”

She smiled regretfully and stood. “Okay.”

Once she’d torn herself away and made her way back to the surveillance van, Dean lit into her. “Are you buyin’ this? Seriously?”

Dana blinked, startled. “What? No, I—”

“’Cause those mantras? You might as well try summoning rain by singin’ ‘Bing Tiddle Tiddle Bong’!”

“The festival cup was most likely spiked with peyote or straight mescaline,” Sam added. “You’d get a better message in tongues chanting ‘Watermelon, watermelon, rhubarb, rhubarb.’”

“And I checked with the bank this afternoon,” Paris concluded. “The place was bought and paid for by agents from the EPR. The whole thing’s as phony as a three-dollar bill.”

Sam nodded. “The only thing he probably wasn’t lying about was when he made the deal with Famine. _That_ part of it is real.”

Dana huffed. “Guys, come on, lighten up. So it’s fake. That in itself isn’t dangerous.”

“We can’t record all the cameras all the time,” Barney said as he flipped one display off of the live feed, “but we did catch this.” And he turned on a tape.

The black-and-white recording showed Carl walking into the front hall, with sunlight or something glinting off the ring and causing a flare in the camera, and a man in a dark-colored outfit walking up to him. “Master Carl,” the second man said with a bow.

“What?” Carl replied. “You know you’re not supposed to be up here.”

“Forgive me, my master, but my fellows have been wondering why we must delay our own feast until after the other houses. Some feel the Horseman is... growing displeased.”

“Now just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“With the fast upon us, and with the fullness of the moon yet three weeks away—”

“All right, all right, I get it. You’re sure Anderson’s not a were?”

“He insists not. And he has changed before my eyes into a form quite unlike a wolf.”

Carl grumbled something Dana couldn’t catch. “Four hearts enough?”

“I should think so.”

“All right. I’ll go through the roster for Fire House, see who can go now besides Devlin; I can’t get any more past his dementia, and he’s making trouble. The old man can take the rest of his tribute when we clean up tomorrow morning.”

The second man bowed deeply and turned to leave, and Barney stopped the tape.

Dana shook her head. “Four hearts? What are they talking about?”

“Anderson’s a skinwalker,” Sam explained. “They’re like werewolves, but weres don’t fully change form, and most are tied to the full moon. Skinwalkers change into dogs at will. And they feed on human hearts.”

“Sounds like the ring’s gettin’ to him,” Dean added. “Or else the other priests are usin’ him as an excuse to get their jollies with some live victims rather than just cleaning up the overdoses in the morning.”

“Yeah, or the ones who aren’t quite dead but wouldn’t live long anyway. See, the priests are driven by bloodlust, and they get their kicks from torture and murder.”

Dana suddenly felt her resolve return. She didn’t know if she believed the skinwalker story, but she wasn’t going to let herself fall for a man who’d callously thrown four innocent, sick people to such wolf-hearted men. She just had to hope she could keep a tight enough rein on her hormones to see the plan through.

She looked at Paris. “Okay. Tomorrow at 5. We’re in.”

Paris nodded once, and the other men didn’t bother to hold back a sigh of relief.


	4. Help Me If You Can

Paris and Dana were among twenty young, single adults who arrived Friday afternoon to join the Order. After a welcome speech from Carl, initiation started with having a picture taken, being given a light blue uniform to distinguish the initiates from the full members of the cult, and being instructed in the Order’s theology and basic mantras. There were rituals every few hours that mostly consisted of drinking peyote-laced wine and chanting mantras, although morning meditation didn’t include the wine. But Paris and Dana were immune to narcotics still and were able to sneak out to the surveillance van after lights out the first two nights. And according to Sam and Dean, everything but the ring was a bunch of hokum. Dana did her best those first two days to find coping mechanisms that would help her keep control whenever that odd longing she felt started up, and they worked pretty well. She could handle this. It was tough, but she _could_. Paris was doing fine, after all, and she wasn’t going to let him show her up when everyone else had been so worried about him for reasons she still couldn’t fathom. And besides, everyone else was in the surveillance van, watching. They’d pull her out if things got bad.

So she didn’t really worry much when Carl called the initiates outside for another “ritual,” which he called a discernment ceremony, on Sunday evening. He brought everyone to a part of the garden she hadn’t explored yet, a small circular courtyard that was surrounded by flowering bushes and oddly-patterned stones and had a fountain in the center, and instructed them to sit down in the lotus pose around the edge of the circle for this part of the ceremony. It took Dana a moment to get her feet tucked up under her properly, and she was too busy thinking about dead mice to bother about the position of her hands as she rested the backs of her wrists against the tops of her knees. She knew she was supposed to pretend to be taking it seriously, and she did succeed in not giggling when Carl pulled out some Japanese-looking instrument and started plinking away on it, but really, the whole thing was so silly....

And then Carl started to chant.

All of a sudden, the smell of the flowers grew really strong, like being at Middleton Place in Charleston in mid-summer. The air felt heavy and sticky, though only comfortably warm, and she could hear the bees droning under Carl’s chanting. Her head started to swim, and she felt drowsier and drowsier until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. But she wasn’t really asleep, she thought, because she was still aware of her surroundings.

Yet slowly all sounds, all smells, all sense of touch faded away. She was floating alone in the dark, and she couldn’t feel anything, not even fear. She just was.

“Purity of heart,” Carl intoned, “is to will one thing.”

Dana wasn’t sure if she was supposed to repeat that like all the other mantras. She didn’t have a voice, anyway. She didn’t even know how she could hear him and nothing else... not that it mattered.

“Everyone hungers for something,” Carl continued. “What you hunger for reveals much about who you are. It is essential to your nature.”

Drops of pure power fell onto her—the pulse points of her wrists, maybe, and the center of her forehead. She wasn’t sure. She barely remembered that she even had a body.

“You must discern your hunger. You must embrace your hunger. You must shut out all other desires and follow only your hunger. Only when you will this one thing can you be pure.”

The power crept over her slowly, spreading and searching, up her arms, across her head, through her mind. It was an odd sensation, not least because it was the only sensation. She couldn’t have resisted if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to. All she wanted was to follow that lazy slow spread and learn what it might find.

It had just reached her heart—and how strange that was, to be aware of her own heart beating again—when her mouth was opened and three more drops were placed on her tongue. They didn’t taste of anything but light. Her mouth was closed, and she must have swallowed, because this power ran down her throat faster and caught up with the other, and the whole shebang spread down her chest faster. It went down and down... and then partway down her belly, something caught, and suddenly she was on fire. She knew, she knew, she’d found her hunger, and it was burning her alive. She gasped for breath and couldn’t hold back a groan.

“Good, Stacy, good,” Carl whispered and took her hand. “Come. While the others search, I will show you what comes next.”

Still blind, still deaf to anything but his voice, still unaware of anything but this blaze of desire, she let him pull her to her feet and lead her she knew not where. After a moment, they stopped.

“So, Stacy. You have found your hunger.”

“Yes,” she breathed.

He kissed the back of one hand. Her breath shuddered. Then he kissed again, higher up her hand, her wrist, her arm, each kiss trailing fire. He stopped below the shoulder and switched to the other arm, with the same result. Then he stopped completely, and she couldn’t hold back a whimper.

“You’re a virgin.”

“Yes.” And it was true. For all the flirtation in the line of duty, she’d never gone all the way.

“You want to marry me?”

“Yes.” And that had to be true, didn’t it, as fast as it came out?

He put his arms around her, and she could feel the ring burning into her back. “You know I can’t marry anyone who’s not a full member of the Order. Will you continue with the initiation?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl.” He pulled her closer and whispered in her ear, “There will be tests. You must prove that you have shut out all desires but your hunger. I must know that you are pure of heart. Only then will I be able to give you what you hunger for.”

“Yes. I’ll do anything.”

“Then here’s a promise, a taste of what you can look forward to.” And he kissed her.

Now, she’d been kissed in the line of duty before with all levels of passion. She’d been wined and dined and mooned over and supposedly seduced. She’d also been ogled, groped, and threatened with worse a couple of times. This kiss wasn’t like any of those. Carl kept his mouth closed and didn’t do anything untoward with his hands, but it was still a long, slow, passionate kiss, and the fire in Dana’s gut exploded all over again.

“No more now,” he said when it was finished. “You’ll have to earn the rest.” He backed away, leaving her alone and adrift and whimpering, crying, reaching....

... and then with a snap and a gasp, she woke up.

She looked around wildly and found that she was standing in a different part of the garden than she remembered. And she had no clue how she’d gotten there. Everything since the ceremony started was a total blank; she didn’t even remember falling asleep. And she felt cold and empty somehow, like she was missing something important.

“Stacy!”

Dana looked up to see Carl coming around a bend in the path a few feet away. Her cheeks flushed, and her gut twisted.

“You all right? You look a little lost.”

She shook her head and plastered on a bright smile. “Guess I dozed off on my feet for a minute.”

He smiled back, and her heart started pounding. “All right. Well, we’re done out here, and if you’re that tired, maybe you’d better head on back to the house.”

She nodded. “Good idea. Thanks, Carl.”

He nodded and went back the way he came, and only the fact that she was still too stunned to move kept her from chasing after him. She couldn’t even remember why she wasn’t supposed to do that or what she’d done in the past to stop herself. All she could think, as she finally dragged herself back to the house, was that she was cold and empty, and he had something that promised to answer her need.

* * *

In the surveillance truck, the other men on the team watched as Medlin began his latest ritual, but no sooner had he started crooning than Barney snapped the sound off with such ferocity that Dean expected the knob to break off. The image distortion around the ring was growing stronger, but the main reason for Barney’s refusal to listen became apparent as Sam read Medlin’s lips.

“That’s not a mantra,” Sam said after a minute or so. “That’s a _spell_.”

“What kind of spell?” Jim asked.

Sam shook his head. “Not one I’ve seen before. But it looks like he’s got some real mojo that’s not tied to the ring.”

“Then let’s get Paris and Dana out of there. Shut it down now.”

“No, no, wait. They’re already under, all but Paris, though he’s doing a good job of faking. His breathing’s not quite deep enough, is all. Guess—” Sam caught himself before he could give Paris away to the one person present who couldn’t afford to know that Paris wasn’t human. “Guess he’s got better defenses than we thought,” he finished instead.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, “and if we don’t know what the spell is, we don’t know how to break it. But it’s a cinch Medlin won’t leave ’em in the trance. The other vics weren’t obviously under the influence of anything but the ring.”

So they watched, still with the sound off, as Medlin finished his spell, started pontificating, and then put some kind of something on each initiate’s wrists and forehead. When he came back around to dose Dana again, though, Jim was practically shaking with the need to get her to safety.

“Jim,” Barney said quietly. “Why don’t you go see what you can see from outside?”

Jim sighed and ran a hand over his mouth. “Yeah. All right. I’ll stay close.” And he stepped out of the truck.

So he wasn’t present to see when Medlin led Dana off by herself, at which point Paris broke character, looked straight at the camera, and got up to go back to the house. The retinal flare rendered it impossible for the others to read any emotion from his eyes, but given his practice of keeping his eyes hidden from the cameras under normal circumstances, that was probably the best distress signal he could send.

All four men in the truck cursed.

Barney stood first. “Will, stay here, keep an eye on Dana _and_ Jim. Sam, Dean, you’re with me.”

“You got silver?” Dean asked as he and Sam stood.

Barney nodded once and pulled out his gun and a spare clip. “Always,” he said and switched ammo. “Just hope we don’t have to use it.”

Dean nodded, and he and Sam followed Barney out of the truck. He didn’t pay much attention to what Barney told Jim as they passed or how he convinced Jim not to come with them, but it probably had something to do with helping Willy watch Dana. Dean’s main concern was getting Paris the help he needed... even if it did turn out to be a silver bullet to the head.

Getting into the house was easy enough, and they already knew where Paris’ room was. Barney used the back of his knuckle to rap one long knock and two short on the closed door. Paris opened, looking wretched—and he’d clearly just ripped the skin from his forehead and wrists, though new skin was forming rapidly to fill the gaps.

“C’min,” he breathed and motioned them inside. Once they were past him, he shut the door as quietly as he could, locked it, and slumped against it.

“Dude,” Dean began, pointing to the strips of skin that Paris had laid out on the table. “What—”

Paris sighed heavily and pushed himself away from the door, the missing skin already replaced. “It’s some kind of potion that strengthens the effects of the ring. I saved those in case you need to analyze the liquid; I don’t think it soaked all the way in.”

“You all right?” Barney asked.

And Paris, to his credit, didn’t bother to lie. “No,” he confessed quietly. “No, I’m not. I couldn’t stop him from putting the potion in my mouth. And he’s wielding the ring actively, so the power’s much stronger than usual. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep control.” He took a deep breath and looked at the Winchesters. “If... if you wouldn’t mind....”

The brothers and Barney stepped back in front of the door, blocking it.

But Paris was shaking with the effort of holding himself together as he lay down on the bed. “I’ve... I’ve never lost control before. So p-promise you’ll shoot if I go nuts.”

All three men checked their guns and held them relaxed but ready.

Then Sam nodded. “Okay. You can let go.”

Paris took a deep breath, shifted into a nondescript form, and let the breath out again. He held that form for a few moments, and Dean thought that might be all. But then, with a grunt, Paris shifted again. A few moments later, he shifted again.

And again.

And again.

The changes started coming faster. Paris started breathing harder, making more pained noises. The humans were ready to shoot if he went wild, but he was debilitated by the shifts. Sometimes he turned female, only to switch back a few forms later. Soon Paris had barely two heartbeats between changes; not long after that, he could barely take one form long enough for Dean to recognize that he’d stopped before another shift hit. He started screaming, and Dean was half tempted to shoot him just to put him out of his misery.

Finally, Paris settled into Jim’s form for the space of one harsh pant. Then Barney. Then Willy. Then Dean. Then Sam. Dean thought maybe that would be the end of it.

But then he shifted into Dana—and froze in that form for a moment, hugging his stomach and letting out a low but primal moan. It took a visible effort for him to shift back into his usual form. Yet as he lay there panting, relaxing somewhat and clearly spent, he didn’t move his arms. And Dean could think of only one reason why.

“Guys?” he said quietly. “Under _no_ circumstances are Paris and Dana to be alone in the same room. Not for ten minutes, not for ten seconds, you got me?”

Sam nodded, but Barney frowned. “Why not?”

Dean looked back at Paris sadly. “Because he knows her hunger... and it’s triggering one of his. And the bad news is, he can give her _exactly_ what she wants, how she wants it, who she wants it from.”

“Dana probably doesn’t know that,” Sam added. “But no matter what the desire is, it’s easier to keep control when you’re not alone. And in this case, I’d say Paris needs that protection as much as Dana does, maybe more.”

Still holding his stomach, Paris shifted one last time into the form of an older woman—his mother, maybe, given a few similarities between her features and his—and fell asleep with a miserable sigh.

“He said he takes precautions,” Dean recalled. “Guess that’s one of ’em.”

Sam nodded. “But he can’t stay like that, not while the mission’s on.”

“We never shoulda brought him, Sam. G-Loki warned me....”

“Now, hold on,” Barney interrupted. “You did warn Jim things could get bad. You were straight with all of us. This wasn’t your call. If anything, I’d say Paris overestimated his own ability to keep his nature under wraps.”

Sam shook his head. “You don’t understand. This isn’t just about Paris being a shapeshifter. He told us shifters have two irresistible urges: to shift and to mate.”

“And Dana wants kids,” he and Dean chorused.

Barney sighed heavily and shot Paris a look of deep sympathy.

“Shoulda seen this comin’ somehow,” Dean repeated. “Shoulda found some way to keep him on the bench, out of harm’s way. Silver cuffs, silver cage, _something_.”

“Dean,” Barney said firmly. “This is _not your fault_. It was his choice to take the mission. What he does from here on is his own responsibility. Ours is to get that ring before anything bad happens to anyone else, including Paris and Dana.” When Dean shook his head, Barney grabbed him by the shoulders. “ _Listen_ to me, will you? Stop being so hard on yourself—it’s _unjust!_ ”

Wait, _what?!_

Sam’s mouth fell open for a second before he snapped his fingers. “That’s it. That’s why the ring doesn’t seem to affect the rest of you. ‘Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after _righteousness_ , for they shall be filled.’ Your hunger is justice, and that’s something Famine can’t provide.”

Startled, Dean stared at Barney, who stared right back at him. Yeah, he could see that being true of Barney, Willy, and Jim; if anything, they’d become more determined to take down Medlin once they were in range of the ring. But Dean couldn’t help remembering being face to face with Famine himself— _that’s one deep, dark nothing you’ve got there, Dean_....

“I’m not a psychic,” Barney said, still holding on to Dean’s shoulders. “I’m not a psychotherapist. I don’t know the first thing about what you two have been through, except what you’ve told us. But what I see in you is a man who’d rather assume the worst of himself and the best of his friends, and in the process you take the blame for things you cannot possibly be guilty of. And that _kills_ me, because whatever your faults, you’re a good man.”

Dean sighed. “Barney....”

“You heard Paris out after Effingham. You didn’t even have to hear Rollin out; you just let him walk because he was straight with you and never killed anyone except in the line of duty. Even now, you’re more worried about protecting Paris and Dana from the ring’s effects than you are about the fact that you’re working with a monster. That does not make you a terrible person. It makes you the opposite. And I wish like anything that I could make you see that.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” Dean said quietly.

“No. But I know it wouldn’t haunt you if you weren’t a good man at heart.”

Dean wanted that to be true. He really did. He just didn’t know, even now, if he could accept it. But Barney always did call it like he saw it, so... maybe... well. He didn’t know where to go from that thought.

And Sam wasn’t about to let him stew over it, not in the middle of a hunt. “Look, if we’re going to make sure Paris and Dana don’t end up alone together, we need to take Medlin down soon. Like, tonight if we can swing it. They’re okay for now, but depending on how things go after breakfast....”

Dean pulled himself together and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. We need to bust his lab first, probably, make sure he can’t pull off any more stunts like this one.”

“Right,” Barney agreed. “You two take care of that, signal Jim to bust the office. I’ll stay with Paris, and Willy can watch Dana from the truck.”

“And Loki’s on standby if we need him.”

“What’s the signal?”

“Just call for him.”

“Right.”

So agreed, the brothers quietly unlocked the door and left, pausing long enough to hear Barney lock it again behind them. Then they started cautiously making their way toward Medlin’s lab.

But Dean couldn’t suppress a sigh and a muttered, “I hate this, Sam.”

Sam squeezed his shoulder. “Me, too.”

They were just about to the end of the hall leading to the back foyer, however, when Dana walked in, looking dazed and moving slowly and hugging herself as if she were cold.

“Dana!” Dean stage-whispered. “Psst! Hey! Dana!”

But Dana didn’t react at all and kept walking.

Concerned, Dean started to go after her, but Sam grabbed his shoulder. “Dude. The potion hasn’t worn off yet.”

“And it won’t,” Gabriel added, appearing on the other side of Sam. “Not fully. Not while Medlin still has the ring.”

Dean’s heart sank further. “Dammit.”

“Hey, you _tried_ to talk her out of this. And you can still get her out alive, like Ada and all the rest.”

“Gabe... tell us the truth. How’d it go before? When—without us. Would the team put a stop to this?”

Gabriel sighed. “The cult would shut down, yeah. But they wouldn’t save Dana.”

“What about the Campbells? They get the ring as well as the skinwalker?”

“No. They wouldn’t get the chance. Without you here to help, Jim would try to pull Dana out now, while Medlin’s alive. But with that potion in her....”

“She wouldn’t agree to leave,” Sam breathed. “Hell, she’d insist on finishing the initiation right away. She’d break herself.”

“And Medlin would give her some assurances that she’s in for good, send her to pack—and order an immediate feast.”

Dean swore. “They’d go Jonestown?” he asked before remembering that the Jonestown mass murder/suicide hadn’t happened yet.

But Gabriel, being an angel, got the reference anyway. “Close. Ketamine, not cyanide. And once they were stoned, the priests would finally come down from the Temple.”

Dean felt sick.

“Paris would get out in the confusion, but the authorities would arrive too late. Meanwhile, Medlin grabs Dana and the tapes and splits for a ‘mission trip’ to the South Pacific, where he can’t be traced, starts over with a cargo cult and uses Dana’s ‘confessions’ to keep the EPR goodies flowing so the locals keep feeding his power trip. Ten years later, Famine shows up to collect, and Dana’s left disavowed, widowed, and stranded, with fifteen kids and no clue how to pick up the pieces.”

Dean shook his head. “No curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men....”

Sam squeezed his shoulder again. “ _Hey._ We’re here this time. We can change all of that.”

“And you can start making changes right now,” Gabriel added. “I’ll meet you guys in the lab.” And he took off.

Seconds later, Jim slipped in through the back door and joined the brothers. “How’s Paris?”

Dean sighed. “Hit kind of a rough patch, but he’s asleep now. Think he’ll be okay. Barn’s stayin’ with him.”

“Good, good. Have you seen Dana?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. She’s still under.”

Jim looked anguished. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Jim, we’re not talking about normal drugs here. The treatment Doug gave her works; we’ve seen that already. Paris says this was a potion that makes people more sensitive to the ring’s power. If she’s in Medlin’s thrall, and if we try to pull her out now, she’ll run right back to him and blow the whole operation. The only way to help her is to get him—and fast.”

“I still don’t... well. You’re right. The reason doesn’t matter. The sooner we get Medlin, the sooner we can all rest easy.”

The brothers nodded in unison. “We’ll take the lab,” Dean said. “You get the safe. We’ll probably have to wait to hit the confessionals until it’s over.”

Jim nodded back and turned to go to Medlin’s office. But then he paused and looked back at Sam. “Sam... thanks.”

Sam blinked. “For what?”

“Not saying ‘I told you so.’”

Sam smiled sadly, and Jim left.

Picking the lock on the lab door was almost too easy for Sam. Inside, the Winchesters found cabinets full of legal and illegal drugs, shelves stocked with all manner of herbs and occult paraphernalia, and Gabriel, who was holding an eyedropper of some colorful liquid with a familiar glint in his eye.

“Hey, Dean,” Gabriel whispered immediately. “Taste this.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “No, thanks.”

“Aw, c’mon. Trust me.”

Stifling his qualms because it wouldn’t make sense for Gabriel’s Trickster streak to turn malicious at this particular moment, Dean rolled his eyes and opened his mouth. Gabriel squirted the liquid onto Dean’s tongue, and his eyes widening in shock, Dean swallowed quickly and coughed.

“ _Dude_ ,” he wheezed. “What is that, hummingbird juice?!”

Gabriel’s smirk and eyebrow waggle were all the answer Dean needed.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

Dean nodded. “Yeah, if I don’t go into a diabetic coma.”

“—You’re not diabetic.”

“Think I might be after that. Damn.”

Gabriel snickered. “I’ve replaced all the potions with sugar water. Don’t sweat the mundane stuff; if Medlin survives, the cops can bust him for possession.”

“If?” Sam and Dean chorused.

Gabriel ignored them. “You mooks can handle switching the labels on these spell ingredients. Main thing is to not let anyone figure out that anything’s been moved. Have fun!” And he disappeared again.

Dean grumbled under his breath and started toward one set of shelves.

“Dude,” Sam said, “how do you even know what hummingbird juice tastes like?”

“I was at Lisa’s. Look, it was red, okay? I thought it was Kool-Aid.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up in amusement.

“Shut up.” Dean picked up a bottle of asafetida and started looking for something to swap it with.

* * *

As Paris slid deeper into sleep and back into his own form, Barney sat down at the table and wondered what kind of night he was in for. _Nothing_ about this mission was going right, so he supposed it was too much to hope that he’d have a wholly uneventful time and Paris would sleep peacefully. The worst case scenario was probably Paris freaking out and trying to kill someone, but Barney could definitely hope he wouldn’t have to put his friend down for that reason. That left a whole range of less-bad scenarios, but Barney knew he didn’t know enough to even begin to guess what they might be.

After a moment, he got up and threw away the strips of skin that were still sitting on the table. Even if they were analyzed, there was no guarantee that the results would tell the team anything, that anyone would believe the explanation, or that the nature of the skin wouldn’t raise too many questions. Barney couldn’t help feeling a little uncomfortable about touching the skin, despite the texture being closer to that of a latex mask than that of human skin, but at least he knew where it had come from. And he really didn’t want to open Paris up to questions that couldn’t afford straight answers.

Paris started to twitch a little as he dreamed, then to shift in and out of Dana’s form. He began breathing harder and letting out small whimpers and other pained noises. He seemed to be fighting whatever was troubling him, but Barney couldn’t tell if Paris was winning that fight or whether or not he ought to wake Paris.

Then, with what looked like a major effort, Paris shifted into Dean’s form, flopped over onto his back with his arms spread, and relaxed. Barney hoped that would be a good thing, since Dean wasn’t affected by the ring the same way Dana was. But given what little Barney knew about Dean’s past, there might be a ton of nightmare material waiting in Dean’s memories to ambush Paris.

“Sammy,” Paris croaked suddenly, and his Dean-face shifted to look about five years younger. “No... S-Saaaaam....”

Blood began to well up from a cut that followed a phantom knife’s trail snaking lazily across his face.

“No—no— _no_ —Sa—” Paris’ voice cut out as another cut flashed across his throat.

Barney watched in frozen horror for several seconds more as Paris’ borrowed nightmare played out across his borrowed skin and his mouth opened mutely to scream while he thrashed in agony that only Dean or Sam could understand. But as the number of cuts grew, Barney found his own voice long enough to get out an urgent whisper of “Loki... _Loki, help!_ ”

And suddenly Loki was beside him. “What? What’s—” Then he caught sight of Paris, swore, and ran to the bed. “Forget everything you’re about to see,” he cautioned Barney, then put his hand on Paris’ head.

The cuts and the blood vanished, but Paris still seemed to be locked in both Dean’s form and Dean’s nightmares. The thrashing slowly subsided into mere twitches until he finally lay still—

—and then slid into Sam’s form.

Loki cursed again. “Barney, leave the room.”

“But—” Barney started to object.

“ _Now._ ”

Barney gulped and ducked out into the hall, closing the door behind him a split second before blinding light blazed around its edges. He thought he caught Paris-as-Sam calling for Dean once or twice, but a high-pitched whine drowned out all other noise for a moment. When the whine and the light faded, Barney’s ears were ringing, and he had to shake spots out of his eyes.

Loki came out and blew the air out of his cheeks. “Well, _that_ was fun.”

“What happened?”

“Evidently, Paris’ subconscious found it easier to hold off the torture of the ring by latching onto what Sam and Dean went through in Hell. Which is a distraction, fair enough, but it’s like cutting off your hand to distract yourself from a toothache. I had to recreate the Great Wall of Sam just to get him back to himself, and then I had to erase the boys’ memories so he couldn’t dig his way back to them and end up even more scarred for life than he already is. Took out Dana’s while I was at it, but no telling how long _that_ patch will hold.”

Barney blinked slowly as he tried to process that statement. “Loki,” he whispered, “who _are_ you?”

Loki smiled wryly. “Sorry, kid. That’s classified.” And he vanished.


	5. And It's No Good to Pine

Monday morning dawned brighter than Dana’s mood. She’d never admit it to anybody, but she’d had intense, vivid dreams all night and woke deeply disappointed that none of them were true. And for some reason, she wasn’t really hungry. She managed to fake her usual cheerfulness when she met the other initiates in the dining hall for meditation and breakfast, but somehow she got the sense that she wasn’t the only one feeling hollowed out. Paris even looked like he’d spent the night in a Soviet jail. The only bright spot was Carl’s arrival, and she hoped she wasn’t blushing too obviously when he smiled at her.

Carl started meditation the usual way, and while part of her knew she’d thought it was bunk just the night before, the familiarity of the mantras was a comfort that helped her relax. Then he added a new English mantra, “Purity of heart is to will one thing,” and had the initiates recite it until it grew just as familiar as the rest. By the time they stopped, the smell of bacon, eggs, and pancakes had begun to fill the hall, but Dana only noticed it and didn’t really care.

“Now,” Carl said. “Last night, each of you revealed to me your true hunger, your deepest passion, the one thing that you are to will to become pure in heart. You might not remember our conversation, but your dreams will have shown you much.”

Dana had to fight the urge to fold in on herself. She felt so, so empty.

“I told you then that there would be tests for you to pass in the coming days. Well, here’s the first. Unless your hunger can be sated with food, food is of no value. Therefore, only those who are truly hungry for food may go now to the table and eat.”

Only four people, including Paris, got up and went to the table. The rest of the initiates stayed where they were. Dana wasn’t sure how this was any kind of test; she didn’t think she could eat right now if she tried.

After a couple of minutes of watching the initiates who weren’t eating, Carl said, “All right. If you merely wish to eat, you may. Otherwise, return to your rooms.”

Dana bolted for the door and didn’t question why she was running until she was halfway back to her room. Even then, the question was fleeting; she didn’t slow down until the door slammed shut behind her. Then she stopped, struggled to pull herself together, and sat down on the window seat to try to remember what she was supposed to be doing. She’d had another purpose for coming here that _wasn’t_ to join the Order, but she was having trouble focusing on it—or on anything, really.

She was staring blankly out the window when she finally realized that she had a perfect view down to The Orchard. And at about the same time, the inhabitants of that house started coming out for their morning chores, some singly, some smiling couples hand in hand, some women in groups of twos and threes laughing and talking and resting their hands on their growing bellies, full of four, five, six months of bliss.

Dana put a hand to her own very flat, very empty stomach and felt a deep, bitter pang of jealousy.

“Well, little Jackrabbit,” Carl said from somewhere beside her, making her jump. “I’d say you passed that test with flying colors!”

She laughed and looked up at him. “I really wasn’t hungry.”

“I noticed. Not sure I can say the same about your friend Tony.”

“Tony has his own problems,” she muttered, wondering what had wrecked Paris so badly.

Carl didn’t comment. Instead, he nodded toward the window. “Thinking about what house you’d like to join?”

“The Orchard,” she replied quickly, a little desperately. “Oh, Carl, those women look so _happy_.”

“Oh? And here I thought you were more interested in me,” he teased.

There was no hiding her deep, burning blush this time. “I’m sorry. You don’t even have to marry me....”

“Hey,” he interrupted before she could wonder where that had come from. “You’re jumping the gun again, Jackrabbit. I never said that. We’ve just got to take things one step at a time.”

She ducked her head.

“Look, why don’t you go shadow Star House for the day? They’re having a fast-day meditation this morning, might get your mind off things for a while.”

She nodded and smiled up at him again. “Thanks, Carl.”

“Anything for you, gorgeous.” He shot her that dazzling smile and left.

Once the door was closed, she let out a groan of frustration, then tried chanting a couple of mantras to ground herself enough to go out to Star House.

She arrived just as Ada and a couple of the other Star House members she’d met were going back inside for meditation. Ada was delighted that Dana was joining them and ushered her into the sanctuary, helped her get settled on the back row, and filled her in on some parts of the ceremony that the initiation instruction hadn’t yet covered. But the gnawing emptiness crept back as Dana sat waiting for the meditation to begin, and it really was a relief to turn her mind off and give herself over to the chant. She didn’t even need to count repetitions; the leaders struck the gong and announced the next mantra every time it was time to change. It almost didn’t matter what the words were. All that mattered was the peace she felt as she let her worries slip away.

She was supposed to be doing something, she thought distantly. Jim had told her to do something else. But Carl had told her to do this to feel better, and he was right. She didn’t care about Jim. She cared about Carl. Carl knew best.

Then, after one gong, the leader who’d been announcing the mantras declared, “Children of the Star, our high priest comes.”

Everyone bowed face down to the ground.

“Bid him welcome!”

A new mantra started up that Dana wasn’t quite familiar with and didn’t understand, as it was in Hindi or something. But that didn’t stop her from picking it up as fast as she could and joining in, because... because _Carl_.

Then there was another gong, and Carl’s voice rang out, “Children of the Star, what is purity of heart?”

“Purity of heart is to will one thing,” everyone responded.

“Of what value is wealth?”

“None.”

“Of what value is health?”

“None.”

“Of what value is food?”

“None.”

“Of what value is drink?”

“None.”

“What are all these things?”

“ _Vanitas, vanitas, vanititum vanitas_.”

“What is your desire?”

Everyone but Dana, who didn’t know the right answer, replied, “To serve our master and earn his favor.”

“You have spoken well. You have my favor.”

A silent thrill ran through the room.

“Children of the Star,” Carl continued, “I have sent you a new sister who seeks her passion, for in this house there is no judgment. Jackrabbit, do not rise, but come to me.”

Before Dana could figure out what he meant by that, she found herself sliding on her stomach into the aisle and bear-crawling toward him. And she wasn’t sure why.

“You are an obedient child, my Jackrabbit,” he said as she reached his feet. “Tell us your name.”

It took a second for her to remember her cover identity. “My name is Stacy Rogers.”

“Again.”

“My name is Stacy Rogers.”

“Again.”

“My name is Stacy Rogers.”

“Louder.”

“My name is Stacy Rogers,” she repeated louder.

“Louder.”

Again and again she repeated the sentence at his order, at varying volumes, until the words had almost lost any meaning. And she didn’t care.

Finally, the repetitions stopped. “Stacy,” he said, “in this Order, the pursuit of passion is subject to obedience. Therefore, I must see the extent to which you will obey. Will you accept this test?”

“I will.”

“Stand.”

She stood.

“Jump.”

She jumped.

“Again.”

She jumped.

“Until the hundredth repetition of the opening mantra, jump!”

The gong sounded and the chant began, and she jumped until the gong sounded again.

“Now, as the meditation continues, I want you to dance until I tell you to stop.”

The gong sounded again, and she danced wildly, blindly, letting the chant carry her away until she almost couldn’t stand anymore.

Carl stopped her then, and the gong sounded before he resumed his questioning. “Stacy, what is purity of heart?”

“Purity of heart,” she panted, “is to will one thing.”

“Of what value is wealth?”

“None.”

“Of what value is health?”

“None.”

“Of what value is food?”

“None.”

“Of what value is drink?”

“None.”

“What are all these things?”

“ _Vanitas, vanitas, vanititum vanitas_.”

“What is your desire?”

“To serve my master,” she replied without thinking, “and bear his children.”

He smiled. “You have spoken well. Receive this in earnest of your desire.” He pulled her close and gave her a long, smoldering kiss that stole what remained of her breath and her strength. “Rest now,” he said as her legs gave out and he guided her to lie face down on the floor. “Remain here prostrate until the meditation ends. We will speak again later.” Then in a whisper he added, “You did good, kid. You’re getting close.”

“ _Carl_....”

“Soon.” He brushed a kiss on her ear. “Soon. Promise.”

Then he straightened and gave the order to resume the meditation, and she lay there in a daze as he left. She couldn’t even begin to process what had just happened. This didn’t seem like the way she ought to behave, but it was almost like she was in a trance, not thinking, just acting, and all because she needed— _needed_ —for Carl to fill this gaping hole in her middle that was threatening to swallow her whole.

Jim wanted her to be doing something, she thought as the chant rose around her again.

But who was Jim?

... Who was she?

* * *

Paris, meanwhile, after a tense exchange with Medlin over breakfast due to his having bailed on the discernment ritual the night before, had volunteered for weeding detail in a part of the garden that allowed him to keep an eye on the driveway. He’d overheard enough of Medlin’s conversations with other initiates to suspect that there was a one-hour gap in Medlin’s schedule for the day that could be accounted for only by a scheduled visit from Victor Chrenko. Though Paris still itched with the need to shift, keeping an eye out for Chrenko would give him something to focus on other than his own suffering.

Sure enough, somewhere around 11, a car drove in and Chrenko got out. Paris had no way of knowing whether the guys in the surveillance truck were watching the front of the house, but there was a camera near him that he’d been studiously avoiding as it followed his movements, so he decided to take a chance and sidled over to it.

“Jim,” he said quietly, looking away from the camera, “Chrenko’s just arrived. This would be a good time to move. I’ve lost Dana, but I’ll go try to warn her.”

The camera let out one long whirr and two short.

Assuming that was the best acknowledgment he was going to get, Paris hurried away and began a methodical search of the gardens, but he couldn’t find Dana anywhere. Finally, after an hour or so, he came up the path toward Star House just as a small knot of people came out, talking excitedly, and he could just make out Dana’s light blue tunic and dark auburn hair in the middle of the group. He ducked behind a tree to watch more closely, to try to catch sight of Dana’s face. And when he finally did, he was disturbed to see her looking rather tired and confused, despite her best efforts to smile and converse with the others, who seemed to be gabbing about something that had happened to her.

Finally, Ada guided Dana to sit down on a bench and herded the others away. Dana shot Ada a genuine grateful smile, but once she was alone, her face grew slack and blank as she stared off into the distance. Paris approached carefully, though keeping his distance—he _had_ heard Dean’s declaration before he fell asleep, but he figured the outdoors would be safe enough if he didn’t get too close to Dana, especially since there were still other people within sight if not earshot—and could eventually make out her quiet murmur of, “My name is Stacy Rogers. My name is Stacy Rogers. My name is Stacy Rogers.”

“Dana,” he interrupted quietly but urgently. “ _Dana_.”

She frowned a little and turned to him, and her face cleared somewhat as she smiled, though her eyes still looked somewhat glassy. “Hi, Tony! What’s going on?”

He stifled a curse. “Chrenko’s been here.”

She blinked. “Who?”

“Victor Chrenko, Medlin’s contact. He got here about an hour ago; don’t know if he’s left yet.”

“Contact for what?”

“For—for the _EPR_.”

“The who?”

“Dana, snap out of it! This isn’t funny! Jim’s—”

She laughed. “Oh, Tony, come on. Let it go. Let it all go. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Carl knows what we need, and the rest is all worthless anyway— _vanitas, vanitas, vanititum vanitas, vanitas, vanitas, vanititum vanitas_....” Her eyes clouded and unfocused again as she slipped into a chanting trance.

Paris jammed his hands into his hair and just barely managed to stop himself from tearing it out by the scalp. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was stoned, but he did know better. Even if she’d ingested drugs, they wouldn’t have worked. This was thrall, pure and simple, and he was fighting against it himself. Whatever she’d just experienced in Star House had only strengthened the thrall’s hold over her. The hypnotic nature of the chant wasn’t helping, either, and Dana seemed to be building a psychological dependence on it at an alarming rate. She was losing herself, and he had to hope that the rest of the team, especially Sam and Dean, would be able to find some way to free her.

Before he could figure out what to do in the meantime, though, the garden’s quiet was shattered by the blare of a klaxon.

That jolted Dana out of her trance and onto her feet. “Carl,” she breathed, staring past Paris toward the main house. “Carl’s in trouble.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Jim’s—”

“Carl,” she repeated louder, and like almost everyone else in the gardens, she started to run toward the house.

But Paris stood in her way, finally getting her full attention. “Jim’s taking him down! That’s what we came for!”

Her face grew distressed. “No, I have to help Carl!” And she dodged to try to run past him.

“Dana!” Paris cried in dismay, and without thinking, he grabbed her upper arm below her sleeve as she passed.

* * *

The Winchesters had gotten sick of keeping Jim from watching Dana make a fool of herself (poor kid) and walked into town to grab some stakeout food, eating their share on the way back while they still had an appetite. They returned just as Jim switched all six displays away from the gardens and onto the main house.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked.

“Chrenko’s just arrived,” Jim replied, pointing to the display of the front entrance camera, where a dark-haired, weasel-faced man was waiting to be let in.

Dean went forward to wake Willy and Barney, who were napping in the front seats, and deliver their share of the food while Sam settled in with Jim to watch the displays. Medlin showed up shortly after Chrenko was let into the office, and after an initial exchange of pleasantries, the two men got into a long discussion about lines of inquiry, who had become expendable and who still needed to be pumped, continuing compensation, and so on. Jim took notes, and Barney got on the radio to call for police backup.

Then Medlin passed Chrenko a stack of tape reels. “Brought these in this morning,” he said as he stood. “And here are the rest.” He revealed the safe, which was behind a picture behind his desk, and opened it... only to find it empty.

At his curse, Chrenko frowned. “What is it?”

Medlin turned back to him. “We had a break-in last week. We were still doing inventory when the cops brought everything back. At least, I _thought_ they brought everything back. The thieves hadn’t hit the lab, and what with arranging for security cameras and preparing for initiation, I never even thought to check the safe.”

“That was most careless.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Medlin shut the safe and sat back down. “I’ll have to start this round over after initiation’s finished. None of it was time-sensitive, was it? I’ll do my best to remember if so.”

“If it were time sensitive, I would not have left it this long. Only see that you get us the information somehow, or the next advance will be withheld. Now, about the new initiates.”

Medlin slid Chrenko the stack of Polaroids he’d taken the first night.

Chrenko flipped through them, remarking on a couple. But he paused over Paris’ picture. “This man is an agent. I do not recall his true name, but Dr. Tabor had some trouble in trying to induce him to kill his control. He will not give up information so easily.”

“Who, Tony? Well, I think he’s about to get the boot anyway. He’s stubborn, resistant. Not sure he’s human, to be honest.”

Chrenko snorted and flipped to Dana’s picture, then showed it to Medlin. “This woman is also an agent, and her name is false. Her real name is Dana Lambert.”

Medlin chuckled. “Not anymore. Now, she is Stacy Rogers, desperately single, and in two days’ time, my wife.”

“Wife? How many does that make now?”

Medlin laughed. “Wives, concubines, what’s the difference? They live to do my will and bear my children and tell me all their deepest, darkest secrets that they’d have to kill me for if they remembered it five minutes later. And since I’m not ordained and I don’t do the paperwork, none of the marriages are legal anyway. Now, this one—Dana, you said? If she’s an agent, I’m in for _years_ of fun getting info from her. I’ve never seen such a case of the baby bug!”

“I still question the wisdom of allowing any of the women to bear children.”

“Look, comrade, kids may not know anything, but they’re great leverage. Don’t know if I’ll need it yet with this bunch, but ‘step out of line and the kid disappears’ works wonders on most parents.”

“Can I kill him?” Dean asked Jim.

“Unfortunately not,” Jim replied grimly, looking like he’d like to do the honors himself.

“You are sure, then, that you can control this woman?” Chrenko asked Medlin.

“Can and _do_. If I told her right now to crawl up here over broken glass, she’d do it and be begging to have her first confession when she got here.”

“I wish I could be so sure.”

“Hey, come back for the wedding Wednesday night. Got a couple of other new fish I’ve fast-tracked, have their final tests and their vows lined up to go first, but you will not believe what I’ll be able to make Dana do.”

“That sounds like an admirable solution.” Chrenko paused. “This new identity you have given her—”

“It’s the one she came in with.”

“But will it block her true memories?”

“Nah. Nothing a little pentothal or scopolamine can’t get past. It’s not like I’ve induced amnesia with drugs or anything like that; it’s strictly psychological.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Medlin said firmly, “because you don’t believe in magic.”

The two men stared at each other for a moment, and then Chrenko leaned forward. “Do not think that you can control me.”

“Comrade,” Medlin chided, the corner of his mouth turning up in a cold smile. “Would I do a thing like that?”

The staring contest lasted a moment longer, until Chrenko abruptly stood. “You will replace the missing information by Wednesday.”

“Aw, come on!”

“Wednesday, or you will not be paid.”

Medlin grumbled but didn’t argue.

“And comrade, make certain the woman is under control.”

Medlin smirked and stood. “I’ll give you a spectacle you won’t soon forget.”

“Good.” Chrenko nodded once and left the room.

Jim looked just about ready to jump through the monitor and disobey his own orders.

“Jim,” Barney said, “why don’t you go head off Chrenko? We’ll take care of Medlin.”

Jim nodded and bolted out of the van to meet up with the police cruiser that had just pulled up beside them.

Dean grabbed the weapons duffle they’d brought because of having to leave the Impala in Baltimore. “Don’t ask where we got these,” he said as he opened the bag, “but here. Even if he’s got some kind of supernatural body armor, these will at least get the ring off.” He pulled out two angel swords and handed one to Willy.

“What’s this?” Willy asked as he tucked it up his sleeve.

“Angel sword.” Dean stood to stow his own.

Sam checked that the demon-killing knife was handy. “If he gets past us, the police can handle him. Main thing is getting the ring off his hand before he can bolt.”

“Right,” Barney and Willy chorused.

Barney started the van and maneuvered it past the point where Jim and the local police had Chrenko stopped. They parked in front of the main house and piled out, and Barney did some fast talking to get them inside to see Medlin, who was still in his office.

“Mr. Mackenzie!” Medlin said as they walked in. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re sorry to show up unannounced like this, Mr. Medlin,” Barney replied, “but we’ve discovered a glitch in our camera feeds. Something’s causing visual interference that almost looks like sunlight shining directly into the lens, only it’s happening inside as well as outside. If you don’t mind, we’d like to take a look around, see if we can find the source of the problem.”

Medlin looked past Barney at the other three team members, and suddenly something seemed to click for him. “Oh, of course. Go right ahead!” But on the last syllable of _ahead_ , he reached under his desk, and an alarm began blaring as he jumped up from his chair.

Sam, Dean, and Willy immediately pulled their weapons and moved to block the door. Barney tried to cut Medlin off, but Medlin dodged and tried to shove his way past the Winchesters. In the ensuing struggle, Sam wrestled Medlin back against the desk and pinned him with his arms spread, and Dean, for the sake of speed, cut off the hand that bore the ring.

And promptly blacked out.

He came to on the floor and picked himself up just as Sam groaned and started to stir. But the alarm was silenced, and everyone else was frozen—except Gabriel, who was standing next to the desk with his arms crossed.

“You muttonheads give me a headache, you know that?” Gabriel groused.

“What happened?” Dean asked groggily.

“Reboot. Forgot about that little side effect. Pulled you out of time to make sure nothing happened while you were out.”

“Wait, what do you mean, you forgot?”

“What do I look like, my Dad?!”

Sam snorted at that. “You get the ring?”

Gabriel nodded and held it up. “Here’s the real one.” He pointed to the severed hand, which still had a ring on it. “That’s a fake he can run with, and this”—here he tossed another to Dean, who just managed to catch it—“is the fake you can destroy.”

Dean nodded and tucked the fake ring into his jacket pocket. “Thanks, dude. You okay, Sammy?”

Sam took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Let’s finish this.”

“I’m out of here as soon as we restart,” Gabriel noted as Sam got back in position and Dean put his hand back on the sword that was still poised in mid-air.

“Hey,” said Dean, “we couldn’t have done this without you, Gabriel. Thanks.” Then he took a deep breath and tried to put on the same expression he’d had before.

Gabriel snapped his fingers, and time resumed.

The blare of the alarm was almost drowned out by Medlin’s scream of pain at losing both hand and power. But as Dean made a show of grabbing for the hand, Medlin shoved Sam off, grabbed the hand himself, and shouldered his way past Barney and Willy. The agents gave chase, but even without the cult members interfering—they looked too stunned to do anything—there seemed to be a strong chance that he’d get far enough away that Jim and the cops would have to be the ones to stop him, if the blood loss didn’t get to him first.

But then, just as the agents burst out of the house, Medlin’s flight was arrested by a black van with handicap plates pulling in and parking behind the surveillance van. How it had gotten past the roadblocks Dean assumed were now in place wasn’t clear, but Medlin seemed petrified by its appearance.

“No,” Medlin breathed.

Dean suddenly couldn’t think why the black van would be significant, but he knew it was, so when Barney started to continue after Medlin, Dean stopped him.

Two guys got out of the front of the van and came around to the side. One opened the sliding door, and the other operated the lift that brought out a withered old man in a wheelchair who was on oxygen. Dean thought he looked vaguely familiar but couldn’t place him.

“No,” Medlin said, trying to back away from the man in the wheelchair. “No, no, it—it’s not time yet—”

“Come now, Carl,” the old man wheezed. “I’m hungry.”

“No, please, I’ve—I’ve given you all I can, and there’ll be more—t-tonight, even—”

“But the Reapers prevented me Thursday. And now you’ve lost my ring.”

Medlin’s eyes widened even further as he held up his lost hand. “No, i-it’s right here!”

“ _Carl_.” The old man sounded stern now, and one of his assistants pushed him forward. “I’m _hungry_.”

Terrified, Medlin shook as if he wanted to run but couldn’t. “No—no, please, don’t—”

The old man reached a wrinkled hand up to Medlin’s chest and pulled, and with an agonized scream, Medlin fell dead, leaving a ball of light—his soul—in the old man’s— _Famine’s_ —hand. Famine looked at the soul with an ugly smile, then popped it into his mouth as if it were a handful of popcorn and swallowed. “Ah,” he sighed happily. “Delicious.”

Then the assistants loaded Famine back into his van and drove away.

“What did I just see?” Barney asked.

“Justice,” Dean answered, finally getting dots re-connected through the blanks left by the brain reboot caused by Gabriel grabbing the real ring. “Medlin got what he’d promised all those people he sent to the Temple: union with the Horseman.”

Some of the cult members were just beginning to cry when Jim ran up. “What happened?”

“Famine,” Sam said. “Famine happened.”

Jim looked over at Medlin’s corpse and sighed. “Did you get the ring?”

“Yeah. Dean has it.”

“All right. Let’s get Paris and Dana and get out of here.”

Dean let out a curse and looked at Sam in alarm as he suddenly realized that none of them had seen Paris or Dana for over an hour.

Sam gulped. “Do you think she’s still at Star House?”

“Hell if I know, dude. Let’s—” Dean turned to take off to look for their missing teammates but stopped dead as both of them came around the corner of the house, together, looking shell-shocked. And they, too, stopped dead at the sight of the tableau before them.

Nobody said anything for several seconds.

Jim finally broke the silence. “Are you two all right?”

Paris nodded slowly. Dana nodded jerkily.

“All right. Let’s get out of here.”

Paris and Dana didn’t touch each other as they got into the surveillance van. They didn’t sit together. They didn’t even look at each other. But Paris whispered something in Jim’s ear while they were still on their way back to the rendezvous point in Baltimore, and after they got there, Dana spoke to Jim privately. She and Paris left separately, and the Winchesters watched them drive away, somehow knowing that both agents had resigned.

Dean looked over at Sam. “Do you think they....”

Sam looked back at Dean. “Does it matter?”


End file.
